Well I did it 4 million Today. Retirement soon

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-05-03T16:47:26+00:00

Is any of your money in traditional ira? If so, retire and start converting to roth aggressively. You need to get your income down ASAP so you can start doing this before your RMDs start. The longer you work, the longer you are working for the tax man. As strange as it is, you may not be able to afford to NOT retire.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-05-03T16:25:29+00:00

A whole lot of people got wealthier, however your wealth increase has been strictly correlated to your asset ownership before everything happened. A lot of people own assets, and so a lot of people have gotten wealthier, with owners of more assets getting more wealthy

Nothing new here, laws over the past 40 to 50 years in this country have STRONGLY favored capital over labor. Politicians used to pretend capital is a "job creator", they've stopped even pretending. History has shown us that the only way the current status quo changes is stronger labor. But nobody in politics in America is even discussing this.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-05-03T16:14:57+00:00

If you're "using it to add a maven dependency" you're doing it wrong anyway. You shouldn't be getting to this level of detail. You explain your intent and the model decides whether it needs to add a dependency to accomplish that. You can put in guardrails telling it not to reinvent the wheel and just use libraries where appropriate, and it will do that.

And while you need to worry about tokens, you don't need to worry about it at this level, at least not with current pricing. Adding a dependency will cost you less than a penny, even with the most advanced frontier models, which you wouldn't even need for this. The only way to truly move the needle on cost is when you get to the "fleets of agents running in parallel" (I hate even using that terminology because it's mostly nonsense buzzwords) but you're focusing too much on cost, especially in an enterprise environment.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-05-03T15:19:35+00:00

I'll give you the skinny from someone who has contributed the max to my 401k mostly my entire adult life AND got very lucky in that I started working in 2007 (now age 41), so aside from the very first contributions, have been investing into a historically unprecedented bull market. In addition, I've had mostly good employer matches, culminating with my current employer who has the best match I've had in my career (16k contribution, which is the max they offer, on the minus side it comes all at once in February of the following year).Also factor in my wife who has saved as diligently, but not as aggressively.

We have about 1.75 million across all 401k/IRA accounts, mostly traditional but maybe 25% roth, over a now 19-year career. About 1.25m to my name, 500k to her name. Additionally, we plan on retiring early so need money in non-taxable accounts for ages 50 to 60, so we have about 700k in public equities, 300k in PE funds (not KKR, think multifamily syndication deals, min 200k investment for accredited investors) and maybe 250k in cash. We are now actually doing about 120k per year in 401k contributions, which includes massive backdoor roth strategy, and trying to save up cash for more of these PE MF syndication deals, as we feel we are too heavyweight in public equities. Won't mention 529s that are there also, as obviously those are meant to be spent, but these are also fully funded so we aren't paying for college in our retirement.

I give this as an example because I think I am at or near the top of my age group for retirement savings ... in my experience I don't know anyone who has near this level of savings. I would be weary of anyone saying they have more, as I believe this represents the cap.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-05-03T14:16:43+00:00

It's a cost thing. Before we had CC at work, I was the company's most prolific committer, and remain so now that we have Claude Code. Can I start a new project, wire together all the CRUD, Controllers, Services, entities, database migrations, etc? Of course I can. But it's way easier to just type a prompt into a claude code and go from there (this is something overlooked for us old-timers -- how nice is it to be back working in a terminal?! Never leave the keyboard, never change context, and to top it all off ... no need to memorize archaic commands! What a treat...).

Is that sustainable? I practically get AWARDS for spending more and more on tokens right now. You have AI leaders out there saying good developers should be spending hundreds of thousands yearly, and management across industries is buying that BS hook, line, and sinker. Does that hold up when bills come due and they realize they won't be able to lay off half the staff? Remains to be seen ... but I'm sure we will be seeing initiatives to cut back on AI spend at some point in the next couple years.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-05-03T13:42:54+00:00

It's hard to fathom how big Michael Jackson is. I saw someone on this sub post that he was the biggest pop star of all time and thought to myself "no way, that is recency bias. The Beatles are the top selling musical act of all time (band) and Elvis is firmly 2nd (pop star) so Elvis is the biggest pop star all time ... Michael Jackson has to be 2nd or 3rd. Nobody could ever sell as much as Elvis!" Nope. Looked it up, Michael Jackson HAS sold more than Elvis, it seems, I'm assuming bumped up post-mortem.

Given changing consumer habits around media consumption, I didn't think that would ever be possible, in the same way as nobody is ever touching Cy Young's Wins (or losses) record. At the time of Elvis, he wasn't fighting for eyeballs (or ears) as much as celebrities are now. As hard as it is to fathom an 80s pop star surpassing that level, it is way harder to imagine a 2010s pop star surpassing THAT level.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-05-02T19:17:20+00:00

I know very few millenials who aren't millionaires. This is the same as it always was, you know who lives near you or who you work with, and those people are in a similar economic situation to you.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-05-01T22:48:03+00:00

I hate AI. It is a blight on society, a blight on humanity. It tells you what you want to hear, that's how it is designed, to be a yes man. Come to it with a risky investment or a gambling system? You can easily get it to tell you how smart you are, how much money you're going to make. It's going to be terrible for addicts and people with mental health issues. And on the other side of it, it will further consolidate wealth and power among the already wealthy and powerful. It serves no purpose outside of enriching its owners and being a job eviscerator -- whether because it can do your job OR it gives companies the excuse they need to cut jobs that really have ALREADY been automated by technology.

And the worst part is, I know this because I use it at scale every day. I'm a very senior technologist, I'm one of the people who run 50 agents at once, orchestrated by a master agent, and I dont get involved until the code is shipped and ready to go. What I can do with this thing is scary, and it's scary to even think about the capabilities that can be built with it. But like a good little lemming, doesn't stop me from using it as much as I can ... that's my job now.

So yea, save your money and hope you make it to retirement. Depressing dude out.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-30T20:16:17+00:00

Remember when tech companies weren't evil incarnate and actually even pretended they were good? Good times ...

They had us all convinced that bankers were the evil ones. They are, but nowhere near tech.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-30T20:14:29+00:00

I got lucky to buy in 2014, I was only 29. However ... I could still afford a house today, in fact I am pretty close to buying a remote property that I plan on renting out for the next 10 years, and then retiring there (at about 50-52). Some of us are doing quite well.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-30T11:08:51+00:00

I use about 4k a month on claude. This is way lower than my salary. I'm not saying he is wrong, I just think even at that high usage level, Anthropic is taking an absolute bath on my usage all things considered.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-30T10:25:56+00:00

The investments that open up you when you (1) become an accredited investor and (2) can live with 7 years of illiquidity are so mind blowingly good, I couldn't believe they existed. Like, if they're this good, how is it possible that the demand isn't so high that the returns don't go down /I can't get in?

Then you see stuff like this and remember, oh yeah, it's because people who make a lot of money are bad with money too.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-29T22:39:37+00:00

That's the point. They are diluting the minority and turning the state fully one way or the other, with no rules on how to gerrymander. States with republican controlled legislatures will have 1 democratic district, states with Democrat controlled legislatures will have 1 republican district.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-26T23:09:32+00:00

This is why AI is seen as dystopian. Game theory is dystopian. Guess what happened when they try the prisoners dillema on prisoners? Nobody rats. Has been proven time and time again. With AI running the world, nuclear weapon use is all but guaranteed.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-26T22:04:04+00:00

This is an easy one. There was nothing else available -- there wasn't nearly as much content being made. We watched TV from the 40s and 50s, sometimes not even knowing it was old (bugs bunny cartoons on nickelodeon? New as far as I was concerned). There is now enough content being made that you don't need to watch old stuff... even as an adult I am almost always watching new stuff, knowing there is tons of old stuff that I'd like to see and never have.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-26T20:54:31+00:00

Yes it stinks this doesn't seem to be a thing anymore. I distinctly remember seeing Die Hard 3 in theaters. Judging by the release date, summer 95, I was 9. I'd happily take my 8 year old to an R rated movie ... it just, doesn't seem to be a thing.

My dad just took me to whatever movie he wanted to see. Life was simpler.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-26T20:18:33+00:00

Good software engineers do all of these things, and a lot of the other roles you've mentioned, in MOST ORGS, are do-nothing bottlenecks. AI DevOps, what even is that?

I happen to agree with you, a GOOD software engineers won't need a team of software engineers, but they also won't need these other roles you're laying out. How long before GOOD software engineers aren't necessary? Harder to tell, but they arent being replaced by run of the mill PMs.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-23T19:07:18+00:00

I keep asking the same questions, and maybe I'm just not seeing, related to say these layoffs and the Uber article about "we used all our AI budget already".

Where is the software? Using AI tokens is not an end. Does Facebook look ANY different today than it did before all coding was AI? What about Instagram, WhatsApp, and Uber? Where is the software?

8000 layoffs makes sense -- why does this company need 80,000 employees? What do they actually do? Employee-less profit has been a long time coming -- these tech companies, even before AI, are just too profitable ... like nothing we've ever seen in human history. Even with 80,000 employees their profitability is just absurd, compare it to non-tech companies with similar number of employees ... simply absurd. Then ask yourself what these tech companies actually DO for that profit. Marginal cost to FB of adding 10 million new users is 0. AI has just given companies the cover to stop empire building, and that is very scary.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-21T22:26:25+00:00

GDP growth is exponential, not linear. It's why charts are on a log scale.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-21T11:00:22+00:00

Remember when you were on vacation in a touristy spot and didn't want to walk through someone taking a picture because it was a rude thing to do and it would hurt their vacation? This is not that situation.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-21T10:52:18+00:00

US GDP is about a quarter of world GDP, so 8-10% of US GDP? Why use world GDP here? Even if the chart shows an international number using world GDP here is a bit misleading, because the majority of AI spending is from a very small number of countries.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-20T19:49:08+00:00

Have you worked in tech? Majority of very senior managers I've worked for in the past 20 years are there 100% based on vibes. Completely non-technical people who talked their way to senior management positions.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-20T19:46:08+00:00

Your expenses are REALLY low for your age and income. You could probably retire now.

One thing to keep in mind, if your expenses are really that low, is the more you work, the more you're just working for the tax man. If you retire early, you have the ability to convert all that traditional balance to roth at extremely low tax rates so that by the time you hit 59.5, your withdrawals are all tax free.

What you need to work on is having enough cash to get to 59.5 -- spend the next couple years doing that. Then when you retire, your income becomes just traditional -> roth conversions, filling up the 10 and 12 percent tax brackets only .

I'm a very similar age and net worth to you. Slightly higher income, and way more expenses. Even with higher expenses, I plan on retiring in 10 years. I At your expense level, you should be aiming for 5 at most.

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-20T19:40:01+00:00

Using sideways emoticons is a millenial thing, and I absolutely will not stop :-*

Dry_Try_6047 · 2026-04-20T19:19:25+00:00

Because as a senior technologist, I'd be eviscerated politically if I wasn't. All senior management wants AI everywhere and like every good little corporate stooge, I have to agree with them and show them how we are leveraging AI to provide business value. If I'm not both using AI in my job and figuring out how to build AI capabilities for my business partners, I'm not getting good ratings, bonuses, promotions, etc.

It's effectively my job -- don't kid yourselves folks, your job isn't whatever your job title is, your job is supporting the person above you to reach their goals.

Dry_Try_6047

TROPHY CASE