quote: "Otteson and his wife plan to sell their home in Redmond and move somewhere with lower costs of living, such as Vancouver, Wash., or Hillsboro, Oregon".

Not surprised one bit as this has been an ongoing trend for techies in the SF Bay area to Seattle for decades.

It'll be less a problem with small offgrid farms and more an issue for rural to suburban areas with full utilities because most of these people have no clue how to farm.

One of my coworkers has an rv he works out of now. He's just going to travel around in retirement.

That’s me. Working local jobs with rather unambitious colleagues. I’ve worked for construction, property management, a digital marketplace, and professional services for retirees. All small local organizations. Only one of which with an internal dev team. None of which had any customer facing products in the analytical space.

My entire career has existed under the rock of entrepreneurial blindness toward disciplined engineering. Someone starts a business, it starts doing okay, and eventually they realize they have “too much data” and “don’t know what to do with it.” Then I come into the picture, saying all these big funny works like Governance, Catalog, … they hire me. I get their BI section working good enough that I get bored of being there. They eventually refuse to give me meaningful raises and I leave shortly after that.

Wish I had more money. I’ve gone from 60k -> 80k -> 85k -> 110k after each job transition. I’m still paycheck to paycheck with no savings and a car that only half runs.

You could say the same of aerospace companies

They're asking us to scale back our usage.

I give it another year. The markets are souring on it, big time. Unless something big and good happens w/ spaceX (because retail investors are underwater on that) the next set of AI IPOs are going to be a disaster.

Ask yourself why all these companies are scrambling to IPO now. Thier investors see the writing on the wall: it isn't going to happen. The breakthrough. The singularity. An army of virtual workers with the ability to actually do the job. The only thing left for investors to do is push the IPOs to get any kind of return.

They think we're at a peak of perceived value, and a higher plateau isn't anywhere in the foreseeable future. Judging by how quickly ALL these private companies are suddenly interested in IPOs, I actually think they think they've passed the peak already and are sliding.

You gotta understand, the C-Suite, even the CTO, need to collectively "paint a picture" for investors. And that is art, and art is subjective. If investors wanna hear "we are prepared to leverage a new technology so that we can remain competitive", then you gotta paint that picture. The buy in, the double down... take it for what it's worth.

Did you think your C-Suite has ever actually been honest with you about plans, priorities, the value proposition of your work... anything really? Don't ever confuse what they "say" with what the actually think or believe.

You SHOULD quit, I WISH I was in a position to do so. I'd spin by we could crack a cold one. Hella jealous.

Just like... for your soul... don't think this is the new normal. Some neat and good and useful stuff is going to come out of this... but the impact that this tech will have on the workforce is being wildly overestimated.

Best of luck to you. I'm in a similar boat, but thankful I have a good job I don't dread that makes an effort to take good care of me. I'm on track to retire in my 50's, but if my investments do better than expected and I hit my number earlier, I'm out.

But I've also never understood why anyone works longer than they need to if they have the means to live comfortably in the first place.

Yeah, I got laid off when I was 52 and became a school bus driver (I now make about 1/6 of what I made as a mobile apps programmer). I'm not exactly "retired" but that is what I tell people.

Some of us in the mid career point actually have. Nothing like back to back to back societal issues fucking your entire life

The first group is leaving, they do not want to teach AI

To be fair, doing anything in teams is hard

Well, maybe six months ago. Or pretty much any time before March.

Retiring? Or changing careers?

I don't think I can retire right now. I hope you are doing better than I.

I'm just about your age and have been in IT for a long time... I feel pretty done with it and just need 918 more days until I'm fully vested for retirement. Granted I cannot afford to retire at all but I grew up in abandoned houses, literally poor enough that I didn't attend school as that just caused a stream of visits from child services so I'm hoping to be able to buy a piece of property when we sell our house.

I know I'm in a "better" place than I was growing up but I don't know how many more 3 hour meetings with Microsoft engineers where they give me AI slop I can stand.

Yeah also early 40s. Hoped to retire in 3 - 4 years or so based on my finances but it's getting harder and harder to stick it out.

I'd be curious to know your logic why renting is cheaper than buying.

To explain: Even disregarding that a later sale price is an intrinsic inflation recoup, paying a mortgage also means any principle is recouped on sale, meaning only interest is the actual monthly "rent" after a sale, maybe decades later. Finally it's rare property value doesn't go up, which also reduces the costs. Despite all these benefits, you still found renting and investing the difference gave better returns?