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Smoothing out the peaks and valleys
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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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More and more lulls with more and more years of experience. I hit the gym more, socialize more, cook more extravagantly, take walks more often etc. The most important thing was to train myself to not give a damn when people were making stupid decisions at work that were going to bite them N months down the line during those lulls.
One of the things I used to say, probably beginning in my 40s, was "I'm getting too old for this shit."
There were certainly occasions when I acted on it, but it didn't really become the heart of a philosophy until well into my 50s. By then it had transformed into just plain "I'm too old for this shit."
I just retired at 66, and am starting to think that maybe workplaces and social "obligations" would be much improved if more people started living it earlier in life.
How did you train yourself to not give a damn?
A few years ago, back when I still gave a damn (and probably during my most productive quarter in my entire professional career), somebody complained that my language was too curt on Slack, and I was a denied a 20k performance bonus as a result. It was pretty easy to not care after that.
Wow. Since I presume that you didn't stay there: how curt was your letter of resignation?
I actually stayed there (I'm still there); just finished taking my 2 month paid sabbatical, I now have an 8 hour time zone difference with most engineers so I get to work on my own without distractions, and I have a strong policy of not developing anything bespoke and only plugging together off-the-shelf components (I specialize in Platform and Infrastructure).
With the mindset shift, it's actually a pretty relaxing job. I make $180k, which isn't the best salary, but also far from the worst, and I have both an abundance of time and very little oversight (amplified with the timezone difference now that I'm in the US) which means that I can use that salary to pursue things that I am interested in, spend time with my family etc.
I definitely thought about quitting at the time, but visa restrictions (I had just arrived in the US on an L1-B visa which is non-transferable) meant that I couldn't. Now I'm a permanent resident, so I could leave if I wanted to, but I think that "quiet quitting" is still the right choice for where I'm at in my life.
I see, didn't think of the case of somebody with visa requirements. I don't really know how to compare US salaries to my German salary, since taxes and social security and cost of living are different, but for 162k Euro I'd probably also would rather not resignate, but do "Dienst nach Vorschrift" (= doing exactly what your asked for, but not showing extra initiative)