Ask HN: I'm trapped in a golden prison, any advice?

18 points

3 years ago

This is going to sound very braggy, I hope I won't get shut down for this.

I feel like I'm trapped in a golden prison, unhappy but comfortable.

I'm a self taught programmer, 32 yo, with an engineering background and masters. Co-founded 2 companies, failed, worked in california and singapore, now based in Europe. I think I'm an ok dev, quite good with people.

I've mostly been working as a freelancer all my life, started billing 33€/day in 2012 for a few days at a time, now around 924€/day, 220 days/year.

Always worked at fast paced / high stakes startups except for my current job. Worked 60 to 70 hours a week, ~50 weeks per year for many years until 2020.

In 2021 I was completely burned out after 7.5 years of grinding.

Took a cozy freelance job as a fullstack senior engineer in a ~100ppl company, coming into the office 2days/week.

I'm working about 1 to 2 hours a day max, the expectations are so low compared to what I'm used to. The rest of the time I'm just answering a couple of emails, helping some junior devs, sitting into meetings. It doesn't feel like work but it's a bit mentally draining.

I'm getting along with everyone, I'm liked and praised.

I've recovered from my burnout about 6 months in. Since then I ran a saas for a year, did some consulting on the side, got certified as a product owner...

But most of my days are just about dicking around, working on unimportant things.

I've been wanting to move to another company for the past year or so but the tech world basically crumbled at the same time, no offer has come close to what I'm earning right now and no company seems appealing.

- I don't want to do yet another bootstrapped-side-saas-business, done maybe 20 in the past 10 years, earned like 100k€ all combined, I suck at this.

- It makes me anxious just thinking about going back to the startup grind, hearing founders bragging about their tech stack, promising a 100x exit. If I had a penny for everytime I took stock-options as compensation, it would be worth more than all these stock-options combined.

- I'm scared about leaving my current job and finding out I'm unhappy elsewhere and it was never about the job

- I fear I've become a lazy, gloomy and negative person regarding tech as a whole. I hide this feeling and never discuss it in public because it would hurt my freelancing career but holy shit tech companies suck, crypto sucks (worked in crypto for 4 years, I know how the sausage is made), I can't stand the VC & founder crowd anymore...

So I'm staying here, stagnant, sprint after sprint.

I'm thinking about studying and trying out FAANG, feel like I could stay a long time there and move around between projects, never getting bored, earning good money, but maybe I'm idealising these companies...