seanbarry

And have spent the last 15 years working on the cutting edge of AI research.

Looks like the hackers have caused some pretty significant damage. I'm curious to find out what the attack vector was.

After all what? A blog post?

Your anonymous comment reduces somebody’s experience and decisions to a single sentence. I’m afraid it completely fails to successfully summarise them.

Not at all! You raised a valid point, I just wanted to clarify my intention. Thanks for engaging with the post.

Hey, author here.

I actually don't dislike cities and I didn't generalise that they are terrible.

London is one of the busiest and largest mega cities on the planet. It's incomparable to a city of ~400k people where you can walk in 45 minutes from the city centre to the boundary where the urban environment becomes a more natural environment.

The mega city is not for me, and I regret sacrificing quality of life for income. This decision is about rebalancing those two.

Hey, author here.

When I wrote this, I had no idea it was going to receive so much attention. It was immediately after a call with my boss where I committed to leaving.

I have learned a valuable lesson: how important it is to be crystal clear with the words you choose and the message you convey.

Reading my post now, I agree it sounds like I'm naively planning on going to live in the mountains where I'll immediately die in a storm or get eaten by a bear. I also wrote "I'm the least fulfilled I've ever been". I should have written "this is the least fulfilling work I've ever done".

I am leaving an unfulfilling job, and an unfulfilling place, to move to a smaller settlement where I am a short walk from the seaside and a short drive from the mountains. I'll have a way higher quality of life, being able to do the things I love (hiking in the mountains and other general outdoor pursuits) at the cost of losing a significant amount of income.

This is a trade I'm willing to make, and it reverses the decisions I've made over the last few years. This is an important learning I hoped to share with others who may be in a similar predicament.

I don't have FU money, I still want to work as a software engineer and will have to very soon. The difference is that I will not trade quality of life for money, and I will try to find or create work on the terms that maximise happiness for me. These terms are different for everybody, so my solution is unique to me.

The TL;DR of my original post is "don't optimise for income over quality of life".

Author here. You'll notice I didn't ask the reader to "follow me on twitter".

I had ~30 people reach out to me in DMs on twitter.

Some were people who feel in a similar position but don't know what to do. Others were people who have been where I am and offered advice.

Twitter is just a tool to connect with people outside of the immediate circle I have around me, I don't think there's any problem with using it as such.

Author here.

I posted this late last night (BST) and I’m shocked to wake and see it was so heavily read and discussed. Thank you everyone!

The post received some justifiable criticism for making it sound like I’m about to disappear in to the mountains to live like a hermit in a poorly thought out, idealistic middle finger to society.

In reality the change I’m making is to move to a much smaller place where I still have people and the urban environment around me, but with a much healthier balance of the things I value: family, nature, and quiet. Importantly, I’ll be a 15 minute walk from the seaside and a short drive away from the mountains - so I’ll be able to escape to them as often as I want.

I also want to find or create more meaningful work, even though this means my income may be lower.

I don’t have FU money from working at a FAANG company, so my personal runway is ~6 months. I won’t be taking significant time off.

The most ironic thing is that change isn’t immediate. It’s going to be six weeks before my obligations here expire and until then, life continues as it has done previously. As I write this comment I’m standing in a packed train on the way in to the city, but today with a little smile on my face.