on a pesonal note...


...Retired...

Now to have some fun!

Congratulations 8)

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The DIN Rail Mount kit for Arduino: quickly attach your Arduino to standard DIN rail

Welcome to the club, have some fun.

Congrats!

Is your hair like that currently? :smiley:

Significantly grayer (but still there!) I believe the picture on the badge is from 1995 or so; when you wear out the badge, they let you keep the old picture. My profile picture is actually pretty recent (2008, IIRC.)

If you are like most people you'll wonder how you ever had time for work.


Rob

...Retired...

With attitude! Congratulations!

With attitude!

Nah. Cutting the ID card in two is on the manager checklist for departing employees.
Besides, I had a co-worker who nailed his (first) resignation to his boss's door with a 2x4, so "attitude" requires a lot of effort...

Congrats! I'm a long way from retirement myself, and even then I don't know if I will or can (I'm turning 38 this June - still a way's to go). Any words of wisdom for those still on the grind (actually, I love my job as a software developer; I don't consider it a "grind")?

Enjoy yourself!

:slight_smile:

I love my job as a software developer; I don't consider it a "grind"

As did I in soft and hardware, most jobs I had I would almost have done for nothing. But all said and done it's better without one :slight_smile:

I did a short stint a few years ago, the work itself didn't worry me it was just having to be somewhere and do something at specific times under someone else's time table that got me down.

Any words of wisdom for those still on the grind

Yep, don't believe all the crap the retirement magazines and TV shows say. They all assume that you want to maintain something like your previous lifestyle and need an income of 60% of your last salary. I have never seen an article that said "Well if you want to drop out and live cheaply you can do for $X". We live very well on about $15k a year, I bet there aren't any magazines or financial advisors that will say you can do that.

The only person in the world that has a vested interest in you retiring early is you, every body else needs to keep you working to feed the machine.

If you are willing to make some cuts and have some assets behind you it's easy. I retired at 12 years ago at the age of 45, we sold our house and hit the road. I was worried how things would go and how long it would last. Well after 12 years I guess I can say it works, I started off with bugger all and still have most of it left :slight_smile:

My hobbies are photography and electronics/computing, all of which are easily accommodated in a motorhome, but I don't get to save old VT100 terminals and Altair computers. Everything that didn't fit in the truck went to the dump except for a few things we stored with friends.

You have to live cheap though, I haven't bought a cup of coffee in 12 years, but then why would I when most of my time is spent sitting next to a lake in the middle of nowhere watching the wildlife. I still buy the occasional toy, but nothing like I used to.

OTOH if you "need" to hoard equipment, keep the golf club membership, go out to restaurants, or have hobbies that don't travel well that's a different story. It was easy for me because I never indulged in that sort of thing anyway.

Before I retired I estimated that I was working for someone else or stuff I didn't need until about lunch time on Friday every week, the remaining 3-4 hours I earned money for the things I was really interested in. What a waste of time.

Sorry for the ramble, this is a bit of an interest for me as you probably guessed.

(Caveat to the above, we have no kids, they will set you back 20 years, and also if everyone was like us there would be no machine to feed and that wouldn't be good :))


Rob

westfw:
With attitude! ... Nah. Cutting the ID card in two is on the manager checklist for departing employees.

How bizarre. Does the company keep the ID card?

Besides, I had a co-worker who nailed his (first) resignation to his boss's door with a 2x4, so "attitude" requires a lot of effort...

Now that is attitude!

How bizarre. Does the company keep the ID card?

Yes. Presumably they take it to keep you from using it, and cut it in half to prevent anyone else from using it till you've been flushed from the systems. THAT might take a while. It wasn't till saturday afternoon that my email stopped working, and sunday my VPN and one engineeing system was still working (but I could no longer log in.) I'm not sure how long the VPN would have stayed up; but I decided it wasn't worth keeping up just to access the one host... Interesting to follow, in a way...

Any words of wisdom for those still on the grind

  1. manage your career as well as just your job. Do you like exactly what you're doing now? It probably won't be something the company still finds valuable in 5 years, given Moore's law.
  2. don't let financial security interfere with the management of your career.
  3. Arrange for a manager that has good ideas about what you ought to be doing, from both your perspective and the company perspective.
  4. Keep up with the times.

Well done.

I was pushed rather than retired, my pension doesn't kick in until August. Like was said I don't know how I found the time to work.

westfw:
THAT might take a while. It wasn't till saturday afternoon that my email stopped working, and sunday my VPN and one engineeing system was still working (but I could no longer log in.) I'm not sure how long the VPN would have stayed up; but I decided it wasn't worth keeping up just to access the one host... Interesting to follow, in a way...

That's just Cisco. My wife contracted there last year. Her first three days on the job were spent sitting around because here computer wasn't ready. The next two were spent trying to get the software she needed installed on her now "ready" computer.

No pension for most private sector workers in the US. Some 401k (self-directed pension plan, sort of.) I do get the "retirement medical plan", as long as I pay for it myself.
And overall, cisco was very good to me, so I expect to be comfortable anyway.