How is the FIRE movement doing?

[maskedslug]

I think you misunderstand my goal. I'm trying to exploit the loophole while it's open, not get ahead of my peers.

How does one get a corporate middle manager job?

If you're really looking for something like this, just apply to them. Check out job sites like https://weworkremotely.com and fire in some applications. Don't dwell too much on the job requirements—they're usually very soft-requirements, and a good interview is far more impactful than ticking off all the checkboxes.

If you don't have relevant experience / don't feel comfortable with a little resume BSery, you can aim for generalist-appropriate positions in smaller companies. This will allow you a foot in the door, and a good shot at working your way into management fairly quickly. Customer Success, as an example, is a fairly accessible road into this world, if you're moderately tech-savvy and personable.

For what it's worth, I worked for a bit as a middle manager for about a year. It was as boring and easy as it sounds. And I couldn't stand it. I've felt that pretty much every job was a waste of time, but that job took it to the next level. It was depression-inducing. I quit, and took a substantial pay cut to work as "individual contributor" once again. I'd still rather not be doing this, but it's at least semi-interesting work.

[Jin+Guice]

Yes! Thank you for the tips! I am more interested on working on some sort of tech/ non-people interfacing thing than actually becoming a middle manager. Unless middle management is all that is available.

[AnalyticalEngine]

I do agree with @Seppia that the cushy WFH gig environment is unlikely to last forever. I know in software, it's damned difficult to get a job now if you are entry level. I've somewhat lucked out by getting 5 years of dev experience under my belt before covid hit such that I now have ~10 years of experience and work in an industry where this is normal. However, I've seen a lot of companies/my peers being forced back into the office, so I don't expect this to last forever, that is, I am coming up with an exit strategy in the event the well dries up. All that said though, there are a bunch of companies in tech who have no physical offices and expect their workforce to be fully remote forever so they can save building costs, and these are the companies I target when I interview. I also screen for a culture that's more accepting of this when I ask questions in interviews, as well as target less "sexy" jobs, like boring finance work, where is no expectation that you "are passionate" about what you're doing.

Then when you've got the role, you do actually have to get your work done. The key here is to be as efficient as everyone else by avoiding tasks that add no value and making sure you deliver on the things that are high visibility, ie, turn the webcam on in meetings with higher ups, get timecards submitted on time, obviously finish development tasks on time, have a good attitude when coworkers ask for help, etc, then relentlessly dump anything that doesn't add value. Bam, three hours of actual work a day, full pay.

Also, tech is an industry where you can jump employers every 2-3 years and get a fat pay raise, which I do recommend because the longer you stay somewhere, the more you become the subject matter expert, the more bullshit you have to deal with (for lower pay!).

It's worth noting that the software industry is stupidly inefficient because most higher ups don't understand the technical side and really only expect a few hours of work because they care more about consistency and built the systems for the average/lowest common denominator worker.

[Slevin]

It's worth noting that the software industry is stupidly inefficient because most higher ups don't understand the technical side and really only expect a few hours of work because they care more about consistency and built the systems for the average/lowest common denominator worker.

This is more true for non-tech companies. In big tech, people do know how much work a junior/ senior / staff / etc dev can do, and hand tasks out proportionately. Big tech is also much more competitive, and you will get peers who give a shit and work hard all day. In a big enough company, some low performers slip through the cracks and can keep a job, but everyone around them knows they are barely doing anything and will highlight it if needed.

Now at a non tech company that employs devs, yeah generally agree more with @AE’s point here.

[Jin+Guice]

Ok, so don't work at a tech company so no one will know what I am doing. Got it.


Do I need to go to a bootcamp to do this or is there another way?

Do any of you do something that is fun or meaningful ever at work or is it solely mashing the keyboard for the man?

[AnalyticalEngine]

Do any of you do something that is fun or meaningful ever at work or is it solely mashing the keyboard for the man?

In my experience, fun/meaningful and low effort are two things that will basically never occur together. Getting a "fun" job (in tech) requires giving a shit and being a high performer, as @Slevin points out about big tech, so much so that "fun" and "passionate" are things I've seen employers basically weaponize to squeeze more productivity out of people for less pay (Tesla is infamous here).

I'm not saying it's impossible to find anything "fun" or "meaningful," it's just probably going to require actually giving a shit about work and pouring in a lot more effort because the "fun" job slots are a lot more competitive to get.

It really just depends on what you want out of the job and how much effort you're willing to put in. I've always worked at non-tech jobs that employ devs, and it does generally mean my coworkers are of worse quality, my managers are of worse quality, and everyone is demoralized compared to a large tech company, where things actually do, in fact, happen. But my job also has never demanded much from me whereas tech companies do expect actual work.

[7Wannabe5]

I know quite a few age-peers in my social circle who are now fully or maybe 2 days/week in office/ on-site remote. One of them is a lawyer on very long, very busy, very important, contract-work case. She is paid by the hour with over-time, so although she travels around quite a bit for fun because remote, she is still working all the time, sometimes late into the evening. A mechanical/structural engineer-manager I know who mostly works from home really does very little on his at-home days (except play Pub-G), but has to focus completely on his on-site management duties on the days he shows up. My daughter could work from home, and was forced to at her last job because the very small firm chose to get rid of their offices, but she likes having an office to go to, because weirdly, I gave birth to a human who even liked going to school when she was a child. Like one time I was on one of my tirades against bureaucracy, and she said "Mom, the reason you don't like bureaucracies is because they are generally very poorly run. How would you feel about a bureaucracy, if you knew I was in charge of it?" and I realized she was right. (This is another reason why I don't have to worry so much about my old age care, I have a child who is the perfect bureaucrat!)

My father was actually one of the first humans granted work-at-home option for his high-level government job way back in the 90s. He adjudicated over corporate appeals cases for the IRS, so only had to show up at the office on days he was actually meeting with corporate lawyers or colleagues. He thought that moving the age for Social Security up was unfair, because he had a job where he could "take an afternoon nap at his desk", but blue-collar workers didn't have that option moving up into their 60s.

[Western Red Cedar]

Do any of you do something that is fun or meaningful ever at work or is it solely mashing the keyboard for the man?

I'm not in tech, but I was fully remote since 2020 and did something meaningful for the last 11.5 years (sometimes fun, occasionally very fun). I sacrificed some earning potential by staying in the public sector rather than going into consulting.

I heard an interview with Morgan Housel this week where he mentioned that even when you create the best possible working circumstances or land a dream job, roughly 50% of the work is still cumbersome.* This theory lined up pretty well with my experience. I had a job that matched my strengths well, provided a lot of variety, access to extremely bright minds from different fields and allowed me to work on interesting issues that actually mattered. But...there was still plenty of mashing the keyboard, boring meetings, and tasks that I didn't want to do.

[jennypenny]

article on FIRE regret in the NYPost today ... https://nypost.com/2024/02/19/personal- ... nt-expect/

My kids and their friends don't seem that interested in escaping work or avoiding 'the man.' Honestly, most of them seem lonely and eager to find work situations that fulfill their social needs. Most have tried some form of gig work and find it either isolating or requiring too much time on social media. I think part of the reason that DD and DS like culinary work is because of the team atmosphere. Financial stability is appealing to them, but so is mental health (moreso I think) and I don't think they view independence as we define it as inherently healthy/positive.

I will say the careerist mentality has died off in a lot of them, which explains Seppia's comments about work (DH has observed the same as Seppia). Lingering careerists can leap frog over a lot of people right now. Not sure if it's a sign of the end of WFH or of the last gasp of the old work model -- time will tell. After the identity fad ends, it wouldn't surprise me to see this generation sign up for pinstripe work cultures again. After all, the Back to the land movement in the 1970s was followed by the Bonfire of the Vanities culture of the 1980s.

[Jin+Guice]

Thanks for the replies y'all.

Right now I'm working very little for a pretty high amount of money at something I don't care about or find fulfilling at all. I also don't mind it at all. Just having to do some work fits into my WoGs. My question is could I be doing something 1) slightly more interesting or 2) (and this seems more likely) for more money and location independent with roughly the same amount of hours (i.e. not that many).

If yes, what jobs fit this qualification, what would be the best way to break into this kind of work and where is the best place to find out about it?

@WRC: I occasionally apply for jobs I'm interested in. They are usually full-time with pay commensurate to what I make now part-time. I assume I would actually be working 40 or possibly more hours a week in these roles and they'd only be WFH if I get lucky. I.e. what I'm talking about above is how to maximize WFH plus hourly wage from the man plus still working part-time (which is what people are describing with these cushy WFH gigs) and what I'm describing in this response to you is work that would actually engage me, where the money is secondary.

Also for those who don't know this about me, I am semi-ERE with very low expenditures aka with enough money and autonomy to roll some dice and end up fine pretty much no matter what the outcome.

[7Wannabe5]

@jennypenny:

Yup, you pretty well summed up what I am seeing with my kids, nieces/nephews, and their social circles. My DS35, who is actually even more of a bookish introvert than me, was telling me about how he recently went into work on his day off, because he wanted the social interaction for his mental health. And my DD32's busy social life is oddly very much like her paternal grandmother's at a similar age if you just sub in D&D group. LGBTQ support choir, and Vegan Mushroom Growing group and 3 spoiled cats, for Church, Bridge Group, and Coffee Klatch, and 3 spoiled kids.

I grok what you are saying about the Boomers trading in Back to Land for Pinstripe culture. One thing that is really odd that I've been observing in the Green/Yellow edge of my social circle is members of Gen X taking on more lucrative pursuits/careers at quite advanced age, in their mid to late 40s and even 50s, rather than late 20s/early 30s as was the case with the Boomer transition. So, I'm actually experiencing a really weird strain of "Big Chill" peer pressure towards becoming more of a careerist in my late 50s! So, this may herald a bit of a new trend, although I would note that it can only go so far before hitting the 33% rate of dementia by age 85.

[Jin+Guice]

@7: Interesting bc I am 36 so your kids are basically my peer group (especially after meeting my gf who is 3 years younger and has mostly younger friends, as opposed to my mostly older friends). I do not find the trend you are talking about to be reflected in my peers and find much the opposite, with more people quitting career jobs for gig work all the time (only exception is musicians going to coding bootcamps to become programmers and programmers not quitting their jobs). But I also know a very high proportion of young people who clearly introduce themselves by made up names, so maybe I live in never-never land.

I was imagining @JP's kids to be gen Z whom I do not profess to know or understand.

[7Wannabe5]

@Jin+Guice:

Don't misunderstand. The recently born-again-Careerists in my social circle are my extreme liberal Bohemian female friends who are somewhat younger than me, but still Gen X. I had kids on the early side for my peer group, so my own Millenial kids are only half a generation younger than many of my liberal Gen X female friends, although my male friends/partners tend to be older, more conserative, Boomer generation. My Millenial kids towards Gen Z nieces/nephews are NOT vibing careerist, but their somewhat flexible/fun jobs seem to be very integrated/secondary to their social lives.

Fun fact: you might actually know my son-in-law, because he is your age and was somewhat involved in the music scene in New Orleans.

[jacob]

Latch key kids expected to be able to entertain themselves (wall poster: "only dumb people ever get bored") are likely also a better fit for FIRE than the [Millenial] soccer kids who grew up given and driven to a schedule of after-school activities (wall poster: "there's no I in team"). The FIRE movement still doesn't offer much for those who've been raised to either do everything with others or do nothing at all. Something-something mental health and bad fits. Before FIRE became popular, it was very much concentrated on those who really dispreferred having to fit into other people's (work and career) schedules or dealing with teams and their networking politics. Zoomers in contrast has a greater fraction of people for whom it is enough socialization to chat online and so prefer WFH.

PS: When defining generations, I'm not going by age as much as sentiment. However, if your personal sentiment doesn't the societal sentiment of your cohort, you might be looking for alternatives.

[Seppia]

@jp

Fun article, add one to the list of those who forgot that the whole objective is to be happier.
So many people forgetting that money is a means to an end and not “the end”.
I try to look at this very nice and sad comic regularly:

[jacob]

article on FIRE regret in the NYPost today ... https://nypost.com/2024/02/19/personal- ... nt-expect/

The comments seem marvelously devoid of pitch forks and complainypants. Only a few "how can anyone live in NYC for $25k" comments. The majority are congratulatory on her ability to save. Maybe the FIRE movement won to the point of irrelevance. Or maybe she got a break for returning to the Cave.

[AnalyticalEngine]

For some context to that article, the person they interviewed is Gwen, author of the FIREy millennial blog. A while ago, she quit salaryman work with $200k saved to do the whole "get rich by blogging about FIRE" thing was popular circa 2017 and also try to become a stained glass artist. Neither panned out so she went back to work. I've seen her cruising around various FIRE podcasts now talking about "quitting FIRE" to the point it feels like she's cashing in on the post-peak FIRE popular sentiment to get her name out there. I'm not sure she's representative of much outside of the fact doing something without a real plan does not mean it's magically going to pan out.

As for the comments, I bet they're positive because she is basically dismissing FIRE as a valid concept, which always wins you internet points.

[guitarplayer]

Hehe @Seppia good approach, reading the stuff you post here - I'd be happy to work with you

[guitarplayer]

To follow up, and also because somehow it is related to the 'How is the FIRE movement doing?' theme.

What if instead of doing 'ERE city', ere people would target a company or wider, an organisation to work for. Lots of overhead would be taken care of, basic routine structure, laptops, some sort of social media platform likely. Is this a very crazy idea? think of the water cooler conversations

This idea also springs out of my recent reflections on 'lifetime employment' which is a concept popularised in Japan I think (and was a thing generally before industrial labour model, work-life balance and other such things).

[jacob]

What if instead of doing 'ERE city', ere people would target a company or wider, an organisation to work for. Lots of overhead would be taken care of, basic routine structure, laptops, some sort of social media platform likely. Is this a very crazy idea? think of the water cooler conversations

Let me introduce you to baristaFIRE. The workplace likely determines where "your" people are. For example, the Amazon Camperforce (discontinued) targets RVers, while the seasonal US tax-prep industry contains a large fraction of nerds where the occasional Star Trek reference wouldn't go over anyone's head.