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> Written by a European.

Well, I live in Central-Eastern Europe, and even though I 100% agree with the problem statement, the proposed solutions sound unrealistic to me as well ;)

Sitting on death row is psychologically devastating.

> I personally don't understand why people need so much money

- healthcare (where I live, we have public health care, i.e., my salary is taxed to oblivion, but if you want good for yourself and your family, you'll pay a second time, and seek out private practices / clinics)

- housing crisis, with unpreditable and unreliable rental market: you really want your children to start their own lives in small apartments that are owned by the family. And in the opposite generational direction: at some point your parents (or in-laws) will start dying, and the widow(er)s may have to be moved to different towns, apartments, assisted living facilities.

- healthcare#2: food supplements, therapy, gym, sports -- requires both a lot of money and a lot of time. No time for side jobs.

- home maintenance, car maintenance, etc.

In short, there's never enough money. If you don't spend your income all at once -- and you really should not spend it at once --, you will definitely spend it later, on valid things.

I guess it depends on how you view the world. Trustworthy and reliable? Then less money is fine, and the "sacrifice" that you mention only seems to apply to "exorbitant living standards". But if you view the world as hostile, unfair, at best indifferent and uncaring, then money equals safety, and you'll never feel you have enough of it -- even though you could be a responsible and frugal person already.

Agree with your points about public institutions and NGOs. Where I live, having NGO projects on your CV could even work against you (in case you were looking for a government job, down the line).

> floor tiling, plumbing, roofing, ... All honest work, good pay, visible results, and zero bullshit

I'm not sure. First, you need to be good at it. "Leaving tech" does not necessarily imply "good at trades". Second, you need to be very flexible in the quality vs. delivery time tradeoff (and personally I find that really difficult). Third, I'm not keen on talking with clients directly. Fourth, even if there's a general contractor, representatives of the different trades always blame each other, when things go wrong, or the schedule slips.

> company that isn't looking to grow

I don't think such a thing exists (unfortunately). Show me a business leader that says, "oh we've been successful, we've got orders and new clients lined up, but no, I won't hire more workers, more managers, and turn our flat org structure into a hierarchy, because I want my employees to have a sustainable and fulfilling work experience, and because I want my current customers to enjoy the usual, stable service or product quality". Only a unicorn would not perceive saying "no" to growth as leaving money on the table.

> The idea that you'll escape by "Working for a public institution" is goofy.

I agree. Where I live, "public institution" is code for "infinite inefficiency and corruption".

> It's okay to make money doing one thing, and enjoy yourself by accomplishing something great doing another.

Maybe.

First, the thing done for money (or the way it is done) shouldn't at least be at odds with your identity (and/or work ethic).

Second, if you consider how large a proportion of our waking lives are spent at work, you start questioning whether just "neutral" is good enough, for a job.

Good for you!

Alas, as you say, this is mostly pure luck. And not sustainable over the longer term, financially speaking.

Assuming that you save 1/3rd of your monthly net income, and spend only 2/3rds of it on expenses -- which I believe is already beyond what most people can do --, and that you are already frugal (which means that you don't have easily cuttable expenses [*]), you'd need to save twice as long as you planned to live off of those savings. If you wanted a buffer for 4-5 years, you'd need to pinch every penny for 8-10 years, and do that -- presumably -- while you are in your thirties, and raising kids. This can work, but mostly as an exception, I think.

[*] I don't consider expenses that improve health and lifestyle "cuttable" -- organic food, locally produced meat, food supplements / vitamins, therapy, dentist, gym / sports, etc. I've recently learned that even holiday trips (which are insanely expensive, assuming you are not from the US, to the point of being financially injustifiable) are crucial for mental and marital health.

> tech being filled with high paying jobs where you effectively work on issues that directly damage humanity is the issue. And after you have a high paying job its hard to justify leaving it, and every other similarly paying job is basically the same thing in a different package

A thousand times, yes.

And even if you find ethical jobs (e.g., paid-for and ethically committed open source work), they are much-much more difficult to do well. Distrust and secrecy are absolutely rampant between you and your (inevitably proprietary) partners; reverse engineering plays a central role. It's a warzone -- and the constant fighting, battling, against measures put in place by other humans, just takes the will to live out of me.

It should be possible for well-paying, ethical, interesting, and co-operative jobs to exist. They only exist as exceptions.

> I think you are misreading the person you're replying to. [...] They're saying "don't quit just because you aren't great on day 1."

That's not what they're saying. They literally wrote, "you'll be bad at anything new". That's what I disagreed with. There are people who are great at something new (for them), and catch up with (and surpass) old-timers incredibly quickly. And their learning experience -- not that it doesn't take effort -- is generally enjoyable, exactly because they succeed from very early on. I've witnessed this with at least two colleagues. Entered completely new fields (one of them repeatedly), and in a few weeks, surpassed old-timers in those fields. These are the guys who tend to be promoted to senior principal or distinguished software engineers.

> First time playing basketball even if you've played soccer a ton and have good general athletic ability? Don't expect to hold your own if joining a game being played by people who play every week.

Do expect to mostly catch up with them in 1-2 months! (In my high school class, the soccer team was effectively identical to the basketball team.)

> and done in 1/10th the time

I agree with this; yes. But my point is that, for some people, approaching such a short completion time, with comparable results, is a relatively fast, and enjoyable, process. They don't plateau as early, and don't struggle from the beginning.

> If you believe "guess I just don't have innate ability here" you'll give up and never get good.

Correct, but it doesn't imply that "giving your all" does make you good (at an absolute scale). You will no doubt improve relative to your earlier self, but those advances may not qualify as "competitive", more globally speaking. Giving up (after serious work) may be objectively valid. For some people, persevering is the challenge (= lack of willpower, persistence); for others, accepting failure / mediocrity, and -- possibly -- finding something better, is the challenge.

> as though subscription software is something which has been sneaked in on us

Oh but it has (IMO).

> users today expect things like instant updates [...] constant bug fixes and patches

Nah, this is in reverse. With boxed software, the developer had to deliver an essentially bug-free product. Now, with easy updates technically possible, the developers have gone complacent, and deliver shit. That is why users expect bugfixes instantly. (And any enlightened user abhors unrequested features, as there are no features without regressions, and who wants regressions in any serious application?) The only tolerable online updates are security fixes.

> sync across devices, collaboration

This is a valid expectation, but its execution has been a train-wreck. Research, design and implementation should start with end-to-end encryption; the network architecture should be peer-to-peer (mesh, not centralized). What do we get instead? More centralization of control than ever, and less privacy and ownership than ever.

> What is needed, imo, is to leverage the power of centralised, professional operations and development, but to govern it democratically. This means cooperatives where users are active participants in governance alongside employees.

Utopia. Unattainable. Self-determination of the individual has been consistently persecuted under all societal arrangements; communism and capitalism equally hate a citizen that wants to remain independent and self-sufficient.

Right. I don't even understand why this article had to be this verbose. It's not like we need to be "convinced" that local is better. Everybody who values privacy and independence knows already. But this stuff is unimplementable -- we suffer from the cloud disease because it's immensely profitable for the cloud providers and cloud-based app providers to enslave us, and to bleed us out. Their whole point is locking us in.

"Sharing models" are totally irrelevant until the concept of self-determination is tolerated by the powerful (and they will never tolerate it). Accessing my data from multiple devices is totally secondary; I don't trust mobile endpoints to access my remote data in the first place.