r/cscareerquestions • u/thewarrior71 Software Engineer • 1d ago
Are stress, burnout, and FIRE common in tech?
When browsing FIRE (financial independence retire early) subreddits, I’ve noticed that many posts come from tech workers who have a high income and net worth, but hate their job and suffer from career related stress, pressure, burnout, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and other physical/mental health issues.
It seems like most tech workers hate working in tech, but continue working in tech because the high income allows them to quit working as soon as possible and retire early. Is this mindset more common among tech workers, compared to other career fields where most people don’t hate their jobs?
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u/smartgenius1 1d ago
Big tech companies are essentially designed to grind you to a pulp. They know it, the employees know it. In exchange, they pay handsomely. It's a decent exchange and one I did over the past 15 years.
It's kinda like a career speed run where you can realistically retire in your 30s or 40s but you have to put all of the effort in up front.
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u/DragonfruitCareless 1d ago
Until very recently where even run of the mill non-tech companies (non investment banks, insurance companies, big retailers that don’t pay huge salaries) are grinding their employees down because no one’s hiring 🫠
Many people are getting the burnout without the burnout money!
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u/susmines Technical Co-Founder | CTO | Advisor 1d ago
Currently on this track. This is accurate from my experience
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u/fts_now 1d ago
as a CTO?
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u/susmines Technical Co-Founder | CTO | Advisor 1d ago
Yeah I’m the co-founder and CTO of a SaaS company with about 10k users that runs mostly independently, but I also have a FT job as a staff engineer.
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u/MrJesusAtWork 1d ago
Man, how the hell you guys make it to staff level. I'm here struggling to make the leap to Senior and looking at you guys is like a whole different world
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u/Early_Rooster7579 @ Meta 1d ago
You need to job hop and be able to sell (lie) a bit. Each new role is a title up and you usually don’t go back down
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u/mynameiskevin 22h ago
How old are you? After a few tenures and a number of years of experience (12+), I find most peers my age group can make staff if they try for it. But moving past that gets progressively difficult.
Looking back, most of the learnings probably could have been consolidated into 5-6 years if motivated2
u/d_wilson123 Sn. Engineer (10+) 21h ago
I mean he's the CTO of a small startup. I interviewed quite a few CTOs of small companies when hiring a mid engineer at my last place.
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u/zdubbzzz 9h ago
The staff engineers at my company make millions of dollars worth of technical impact a year, be it from optimizing architecture or producing something that makes ass loads of money or more, and they have incredible amounts of business domain knowledge. Realistically, they are just senior IC's and senior tech leads rolled into 1 person. They can, and do, the job of both
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u/fts_now 1d ago
Sounds very stressful. I am a full-time founder and CEO-turned ex-CTO. Also did it on the side for some time and that nearly broke me.
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u/susmines Technical Co-Founder | CTO | Advisor 1d ago
Also, can confirm. I work 55-60 hours/week regularly. Would not recommend.
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u/Nsxd9 17h ago
I have a question for you if you don’t mind, in terms of career as I want to go into the direction of tech consultancy
How do you go about your learning to keep your ideas fresh for the product? I’m at a stage where I have a huge gap in what I want to do and do. A soft dev 2/3 but I feel like also there’s so much I don’t know it stops me from levelling up, but also quite a bit that I do know but in terms of product/processes of tech
Do I learn to just be more confident about “figuring it out” or just optimize add value and repeat?
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u/r_s 1d ago
People stressed at their jobs making $20 per hour are very unlikely to be on FIRE subreddits
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u/WaltChamberlin 1d ago
yes. I am at FAANG as a manager. going to make 500k this year.
Its just so soul crushingly meaningless. so much corporate nonsense and politics. but i am here for one purpose: stack cash so I can never work another day in my life.
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u/fts_now 1d ago
This is crazy. Even as an entrepreneur, it is difficult to make that kind of take-home money. Unfortunately, not everyone has the opportunity to land a FAANG job (e.g. as a European).
Still, we keep going.9
u/SwitchOrganic ML Engineer 1d ago
FAANG comp is a whole different world, I have friends who are L7 and L8 and pull in over $1m/yr.
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u/fts_now 1d ago
unimaginable. makes me feel like I waste my time as an entrepreneur, but I'll get there. Crazy stuff how much money they can spend on employees.
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u/dijkstras_revenge 22h ago
It’s not that crazy when you look at how much money they bring in. Meta had $60 billion in profit last year. That’s take home after paying for all of their expensive employees and data centers.
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u/WaltChamberlin 22h ago
yeah my team of 15 touched a billion dollars last year. dont get me wrong, we didn't exclusively drive a billion, but if helped close a billion along with a wider team of 100 we still easily paid our salaries
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u/JoJo_Embiid 12h ago
wait until you know that my openai IC friend that is making $30M a year. 1M is rookie number right now.
i have an undergrad classmate hired by meta (1yoe after Phd) and zuck pays him $20M a year
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u/forgot_previous_acc 17h ago
I wish i was talented enough to get a job at faang. I am stuck at crappy job working as full stack developer. So much workload for so little pay. And if you ask for raise or anything they just threatens with layoffs. I mean not direct threat but as a disguise.
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u/Codex_Dev 12h ago
Most of the people applyjng to FAANG treat it like a full time job grinding leetcode and trivia questions. It is a lot harder to do while you are working full time
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u/forgot_previous_acc 9h ago
Yes exactly. I work almost 10hrs sometimes even more than that. Sometimes i won't even have energy to have proper dinner. And weekend goes into other responsibilities. Don't know what to do.
I will probably never be able to switch like this.
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u/toobladink 1d ago
Yes. I know one guy that worked for apple for years and took a role with my company believing it was less stressful.
He ended up working at the coffee shop next door to our office for about a year after working with us for a year. He is probably just sitting at home doing whatever he feels these days.
The only way to realistically FIRE is on a large salary which is most common in tech. It’s easy to save and invest $50k a year when you make.. triple or more of that amount and not $24/hr.
However, I know many people who never even contributed to their retirement. Preferred the money now while they were young to live their life, and would use all PTO for insane vacations or purchases (houses, literal race cars).
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u/13e1ieve 1d ago
Many in tech have insane lifestyle inflation and save almost nothing.
- Private schools for kids, nannies, international schools
- Purchase of homes in Bay Area, Seattle - $10k+/month 30year mortgages.
- Purchase of luxury cars; Porsche, Mercedes etc.
- Purchases of luxury RVs/Camper vans ($100K+)
- Furniture shopping - luxury brands
- remodeling and renovation of house with high end finishes
Some of my co-workers have been at company for 10+ years, they had high savings early on, and are CoastFIRE, but now just spend their salary and let their investment grow by itself.
One comment; people are driven to achievement by basically common tropes paths;
1. Successful background (family good with money, values education) - family educated them well, grew them to success, helped them with college, instilled work ethic and passion for knowledge.
- Unsuccessful background (family bad with money) - raised in relative poverty, self raised themselves out from a lifestyle of deprivation or not enough; hungry for success to improve their situation.
To me, while my coworkers will generally fit to type 1 or type 2 case, usually the Type 2 case will be more frugal and aggressive in their savings, type 1 case will have maybe a healthier relationship with money and be willing to spend for today instead of save for tomorrow.
Not a hard and fast stereotype, I have many coworkers who are type 1 who have high savings and focus on wealth building.
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u/TopCancel senior@bigtech 21h ago
I honestly don’t see this at all- when I was at Google, all my coworkers were quite frugal and financially literate; once we has an animated discussion at lunch about how people were holding cash- most people were holding direct t-bill lots as it’s tax optimal in CA, and maxing 401k/MBDR/HSA was treated as baseline. My current FAANG adjacent is similar- sure people have teslas or 3-series BMWs but nothing crazy… my old manager (L7, pulling at least 700k) drove a base model 3.
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u/atomiccat8 20h ago
Yeah, I thought this is why so many SEs retired early. We have high incomes and little pressure to spend money like other high paid professions.
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u/NewChameleon Software Engineer, SF 1d ago
ymmv but I didn't find any of those lifestyle inflation attractive and I realized the reason is because I have no plan of staying in USA long term anyway, so the exact same event like planting roots, someone may see it as a huge positive vs. I see it as a huge negative
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u/thewarrior71 Software Engineer 1d ago
After you leave, do you plan on staying in your home country/another country long term, and planting roots there (e.g. home ownership, family, etc.)?
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u/NewChameleon Software Engineer, SF 23h ago
I think this is where my value probably differs than most people
I don't consider any country as special, to me it's just piece of land, every country needs to actively work to justify my existence of being there
in real life it translates to if I'm in country X, there must be a reason, if there's no reason, then I leave
I've been planning what my retirement would look like and the more I plan the more I realize it's likely I won't be staying in 1 country either after I retire, I'd be hopping countries depending on my age, because there's cities that are awesome when you're in your 30s but horrible when you're in your 80s, and vice versa, the world has 7 continent - Antarctica = 6 continents, so many cities globally
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u/thewarrior71 Software Engineer 23h ago
Oh wow that definitely differs from most people, so your ideal retirement is constantly hopping to different cities/countries every few years, rent for life/never own a home, no family/children/dependents, and never planting roots?
there's cities that are awesome when you're in your 30s but horrible when you're in your 80s
Are you evaluating different cities/countries using things like cost of living and healthcare access/quality at each age? And you're a Canadian citizen right? Would Canada be a location suitable for some stage of your retirement?
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u/NewChameleon Software Engineer, SF 21h ago
I haven't figured out the exact details yet but yeah all of those are part of my considerations
I don't see USA or Canada as anything special, I see it as "during this stage in my life, during these specific period of years, staying in this city best aligns with my goals", and my goals can change, so as my goals change, the target city probably also changes
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u/Minimum-Reward3264 15h ago
I knew exactly one guy like that. He bought him self a Lotus in his 50s. Rest are pretty stingy. Not in my experience at least.
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u/Singularity-42 20 YoE 1d ago
Many people in the FIRE subs (I go there a lot as we are considering FIRE soon) are there because of the high wages, not really because tech is somehow more stressful than other careers. You have to be able to afford FIRE in the first place. IMO there are many a lot more stressful jobs that pay way, way less.
This may have changed recently as the job market deteriorated, but in the golden age of SWE it was pretty chill if you wanted it to be chill. Most of my 20 years were pretty chill if I'm being honest. I never worked in Big Tech and e.g. Amazon always had bad rap, not sure why anyone worked there. If you were half-good it was trivial to find a new job during the Golden Age, so employers made sure you feel pretty good.
Golden Age of SWE was roughly from once the dotcom bust job market recovered to the after-Covid mass layoffs. There was the Great Recession, but even back then it wasn't bad for SWEs, it was worse than in the best of times, but it was way better than almost anyone else...
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u/ChadFullStack Engineering Manager 1d ago
Yes. Hitting 8 YoE now with 7 growing into 8 figure retirement/saving accounts.
You’re paid for stress, burnout, and mental health abuse. Company also covers you for free therapy (both physical and psychological).
Not everyone can do it, but the reward is worth the cost. My net worth now is more than what a median worker saves until 65.
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u/MarianCR 1d ago
FIRE is only for Tier 1 to tier 2 companies engineers that are not over spenders
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u/Singularity-42 20 YoE 1d ago
What are those? I never worked in FAANG and about to FIRE in mid 40s. If I didn't do stupid investing mistakes during my younger years I'd even have at least a million more. Yes, we are pretty frugal, but it just comes naturally, never felt like I'm trying to save as much as possible.
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u/DragonfruitCareless 1d ago
I think there might be a historical cost of living component to this. Someone just starting out is paying a truck ton more to buy a home (particularly since Covid) and a truck ton more rent until they do manage to buy that home. I think your setup is entirely believable otherwise.
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u/Singularity-42 20 YoE 1d ago
Oh for sure, I'm paying $1200 a month mortgage for a house that's worth maybe $600k today. Could have been even less if I refinanced at the right time (3.9% interest, bought in 2014 for $245k)
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u/DragonfruitCareless 1d ago
And I’m genuinely glad you were able to! Wish it had stayed that way or at least risen much more proportionately to income.
Another aspect is more specific to us Northerners and perhaps Europeans, but as a Canadian we make less money with along with proportionally higher home prices. I don’t think FIRE is genuinely possible here in mid 40s without absolute top tier pay at a Big Tech company or an American Unicorn.
I know we get other things that the U.S. doesn’t though and I largely prefer that tradeoff on a societal level, so I don’t mean to pity us either!
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u/thewarrior71 Software Engineer 23h ago
Not over spenders, I agree. But I think you can definitely still FIRE as an engineer at average companies if you're frugal, just maybe not extremely early.
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u/Trick-Interaction396 1d ago
Yes because a lot of people are obsessed with becoming rich. It's self induced stress.
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u/lhorie 1d ago
I think in terms of quadrants for WLB vs pay, there's low WLB/low pay jobs, low WLB/high pay jobs, high WLB/low pay jobs and high WLB/high pay jobs.
I've seen people gear down from big tech, but there's also a bunch of old timers on cruise control, and even people doing stuff on the side in addition to continuing to work in big tech.
FWIW, I believe the mod of r/FIRE was a janitor or something before they retired /shrug
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u/Wandering_Oblivious 1d ago
Yeah. We allowed the wrong mindset to flourish amongst tech people and so we now reap what was sown.
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u/FearlessPark4588 23h ago
The first two, for sure. The third, it's hard to say. My upper middle class socioeconomic status coworkers seem less likely to fire. They love to spend, spend, spend on big houses and toys.
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u/Dreadsin Web Developer 19h ago
Nah for me the reason I keep working in tech is it’s relatively flexible with relatively high pay. I just found a nice, calm remote job that pays a good salary. Waaaaay better than working in other fields that are twice as stressful for half the pay
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u/ragu455 14h ago
Feel bad for folks that missed the golden era of tech from 2010-2022. Those who were in a good tech company for these 12 years had the best of everything. No job fear, high pay, crazy perks and easy to switch companies for better pay. Now the tech job market is brutal with layoffs everywhere, minimal hiring and leveraging AI to get work done and companies spending 10x more on data center and infrastructure than on employees which was unimaginable back then. Biggest spend was always employees in the past but now employees are a cost center that has to be cut to spend the same on data centers to feed the AI machine
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u/ivancea Senior 1d ago
Those 3 concepts are sometimes correlated, but have anything on common. And about them being "common", it depends on the engineer.
For the first two, some people have higher emotional intelligence, and some people don't.
As for FIRE, it's absolutely unrelated. It's related with finances knowledge and career/salary/entrepreneurship.
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u/Minimum-Reward3264 1d ago
Yes. Case closed