alas, many of us will never reach goose-farm level success
Yeah that sounds way more enjoyable, but first you need the 250k and up salary that a principal engineer at MS makes for 20 years, then you have plenty of equity to focus on whatever your hobby is
Average 350k according to levels.fyi.
I was expecting higher for principal tbh
I think MS like other big tech companies has started to run out of “senior” positions without paying more so many people just end up as “senior” principal engineers which is basically “this is as far as you can go if you don’t want to get involved in management”
“this is as far as you can go if you don’t want to get involved in management”
Yes. That exactly. This typically comes with a nice perk: Principals are supposed to have the same clout as lower-level managers. Which is to say they usually report to Directors or even the CTO in some organizations.
Another one is “Independent Contributor” which is similar but, as the name would suggest, is very self sufficient and does not work on (or for) a team. They’re basically one-man engineering shops and are expected to perform well everywhere in the company’s tech and talent stacks. As a result, ICs are very rare.
Jokes on programming. Hated life before being forced into it…
Edit: it meaning programming. This isn’t supposed to be that edgy.
Our previous CTO left by saying “I have enough money now. Peace out!”
We need more of those people, people who find contentment in their wealth instead of endlessly pursuing more wealth.
i’m a data analyst. there’s an urge to say fuck this shit and start a brewery. That urge is there every single day.
This isn’t a shit post, its the truth
You ever been around geese? Those terrible shits take shits everywhere, all the time. Loud, nasty birds.
Currently have 26 ducks and one goose on my farm so I get it.
You ever been around Microsoft management? It’s an improvement.
Wtf does a goose farmer even produce
geese
its the last layer for my gooturducken
That sounds incredibly niche. Why not raise chickens or ducks :/
Bigger eggs and more meat. The cobra chicken is also a great security system.
Yeah, after 22 years at Microsoft in a senior position, you should be able to retire and do whatever the fuck you want as a hobby. I very highly doubt this guy will ever make significant money from goose farming.
I’d way rather be a duck farmer. Geese are noisy little bastards.
and MEAN
Might be one of the few times a Lemmy post related to me.
I have owned a farm for four years, and do engineering for fun. AMA
How did you get into owning a farm, and what led you to engineering?
My grandfather is/was an electrician for over 60 years. Worked on very important projects in New York City. This rubbed off on me growing up. I spent much of my childhood taking things apart, figuring out how they worked, and putting them back together how I liked. I’ve been working on both hardware and software since I was 11. Had the privilege to study CS formally in high school, and Computer Engineering in university.
Good timing mostly got me into farming, especially since interest rates fell to the floor during the pandemic. Had enough to buy the acreage I wanted, and the wife was interested in helping out. We grow a variety of things now, and not just plants. For example we sell Honey, Soaps, Walnuts, and Mushrooms. It can be hard on the body to be so active all the time, but it is more satisfying than a monitor staring back at you at 3am because of some small incident.
I continue to tinker, and assist startups in my spare time, I can’t imagine I will ever stop programming.
Okay, thats the response for rich people. Whats the offer for less rich who would like to “disconnect from the system”?
start crying!:D
It’s a case by case thing, obviously there’s no single answer, it’s going to depend on your existing skills, your location, the availability of geese, and so on
I quit my 20+ year career as a sysadmin about 2 years ago and started turning my backyard into a massive garden. I’m currently trying to figure out places to sell large quantities of hot peppers and I’m about to start selling matted and framed photos of flowers and wildlife from my garden.
Fuck IT.
I’m a senior/principal engineer with 20+ years of experience and I can’t even think about retiring any time soon. All the posts in this thread are making me super sad. And the posted salary numbers are way higher than mine. :(
20 years of Microsoft stock options is a good pile of money
That’s what a year of being a software architect does to you.
You spent all those years down in the trenches implementing bullshit designs an architect came up with, positive you could do better if you just got the chance. Then you go to graduate school to get the qualifications companies say you need to be an architect. You receive a masters degree. You’re your companies leading expert on software design. You get promoted to architect.
That’s when you find out the truth. All those previous architects left for the same reason you someday will. It wasn’t the previous architects making the terrible decisions that frustrated you. It was the marketing team and the CEO telling the CTO that the software product must have certain buzzwords present in the design. Those buzzwords offer no value to what your software product is meant to accomplish. But if you don’t put them in the designs, they’ll fire you and hire someone who will play their games.
Eventually, you can’t take it anymore. Having interfaced with the upper levels of your company, and having the understanding of systems engineering you do, you realize that every software firm will be this. There is nowhere you can go that will be better. You start saving.
Your goal is to save enough money to purchase a small plot of land and put an organic farm on it. Your convictions for this farm are simple: it must be able to feed your family. This may not be exclusively what you envision for it, and you may not even intend for it to be the only source of food for your family, but it will help you be less reliant on the kinds of corporation you’ve come to know and come to see as irrevocably evil.
And then sometimes, you get people like this in the post. Who find enough success farming to focus their energy on it exclusively.
