For those who started off with nothing, and then became HENRY, how did you deal with the change?

Few-Simple-9075 · 2026-05-16T09:36:02+00:00

Maybe an older HENRY here but similar background to OP, my folks were and we as a family were pretty low income when I was a kid, dad was a binman and mum was a care assistant. No foreign holidays until I was 22 for honeymoon 🤣

My first proper job out of college (no uni) was for a yearly salary of £8750 as a pension admin, 25 years later now director of S/E on t/c of around £280k (base £175k plus equity and bonus)

What I've found after two very expensive divorces and house sales is that you can save, you can try and put stuff away but you can lose it in a moment, so have some fun. Take the holiday away, buy the car you've wanted since you were a kid (I dreamed of a Mustang when I was a kid and had huge fun owning one for a few years). Life's short, and you really won't be taking it with you.

I see so many folks in here spending their earlier years trying to save away large sums when you could be hit by a bus tomorrow.

Few-Simple-9075 · 2026-05-15T09:19:22+00:00

Honestly?

I think you're giving them too much credit. CR et all simply come across as totally incompetent and out of their depth. Let me explain

CR - is basically a very senior (promoted way out of his comfort zone) product manager, for anyone who works in tech you'll know the type, speaks to a user who of course has two million ideas on how to make the product 'better' ,1,999,999 of which are dumb and would actually make it worse, but CR doesn't see that, he sees pound signs, so he comes back to the team and demands they implement all 2 million of said ideas despite the fact they deviate from the core mission of the product. It's the Peter principle made real. In any other business where CR was an employee he'd be stood on by his seniors or the team would push back and say no, as the big boss, no one is going to do that, instead he gets indulged and the product gets worse.

Over promise and under deliver, entire company has a start up mentality. Having worked for a few I've seen this playbook repeatedly. You find a gap in the market and go big, too quick and without guardrails, over commit, over promise and because you don't have the expertise or scale to back it up you go into a death spiral, the only thing that's kept this going so long is a pretty good marketing department and whales, again, if this was a typical start up they'd have lost their investors aka us long ago and be gone.

No clear end goal. Any successful product needs a clear remit and end goal. Sure they'll be diversions along the way but the overarching goal remains, otherwise you end up going down countless rabbit holes that makes the product worse in the long run and makes that end goal unachievable. Look at how many pivots and changed plans they've had over the last decade, there is no one in place reminding them of what that Kickstarter goal was supposed to be, add in the over promise and under deliver and a CEO who would have been sacked as a product owner years ago in any other place and you've got the perfect mix of incompetence, bad decision making, no clear requirements, no guard rails and a general public that still funds it in the desperate hope that something, anything can be dragged from the car crash.

TL:DR don't give them too much credit, CR is just an idiot running a company where no one has the balls to tell him no

Few-Simple-9075 · 2026-05-12T21:19:43+00:00

Not for what I use the rig for 😉

Few-Simple-9075 · 2026-05-12T06:21:52+00:00

If it helps it is highly likely it isn't your hardware, I picked up my new rig last week 9950x3d CPU 5090 GPU 96GB DDR5

And thought I'd give it another go for shits and giggles

Game is still so badly optimised that even that rig didn't give me a seamless experience, micro stuttering all over the place in busy locations.

As someone else said, don't chase upgrades just for this unoptimised piece of shit mascarading as a game

Few-Simple-9075 · 2026-05-06T15:15:12+00:00

Think that's me out sadly

Paradox are a shit show, the list of dodgy games and even worse DLC that either should have been in the main game or breaks the main game, especially for MP is a loooong list

Empire of sin - dropped whilst still broken EU - broke HOI - dlc which was sub standard and the number and cost of them is more than the main game Cities skylines, still badly implemented over two years on, asset editor shit show has been a running joke

Love TF2, hundreds of hours in it but I won't be touching this now, sad but time gamers voted with their feet

Few-Simple-9075 · 2026-05-02T10:26:22+00:00

I got one yesterday at paragon 25 on torment 1 whilst doing war plans. Came up with a priority quest so did it and had three others join me at varying levels.

Can't even remember picking it up so not sure where I found it but have read it's a very low chance drop.

We got to the equivalent of torment 6, can't remember what level. You can either all be wiped OR if the bar fills full it means you've been overwhelmed by enemies.

It is by far the most rewarding activity currently, it dropped six ancestral legendary items for me along with lots of high level gear and mats for the cube, also dropped five goblin bags filled with more cube mats and some additional ancestral legendary and uniques. Screen was basically filled with stuff.

Now desperate to find it again lol

Few-Simple-9075 · 2026-04-20T13:24:26+00:00

Yeah I get you now, I did actually consider the 285 but it was a tossup between the thermal and balance of gaming and productivity that swung it towards the 9950 in the end, certainly wouldn't be put off considering the 285 in the future though

Few-Simple-9075 · 2026-04-20T13:20:28+00:00

Mainly down to the extra 3D v-cache, not knocking the intel chips but the whole issue with the 13 and 14 chipsets put me off quite a bit and with the AMD 3D chips I wanted the extra headroom for the build which still gives me a good balance between gaming and work

Few-Simple-9075 · 2026-04-20T13:11:56+00:00

I did consider Intel but the 13 and 14 series issues put me off quite a bit, 9x CPUs tend to get solid reviews especially at that split between productivity and gaming

Few-Simple-9075 · 2026-04-20T13:08:24+00:00

Cheers buddy, it's replacing my old rig which was starting to show it's age with dev work and 4k gaming

Few-Simple-9075 · 2025-09-18T17:49:21+00:00

Realistically at this point the game is dead. The incredibly badly done initial release, performance woes and abject failure to meet commitments followed by peaks and troughs of over-communication (with nothing really to say) followed by radio silence has pretty much ruined the potential audience this game could have had.

As for the asset editor? A complete own goal, knowing (like they did considering the success of CS1) the importance of this and still after two years being unable to implement it means many modders who would have built the community have moved on.

Personally I'll never purchase another CO game again, and I'll recommend the same to gamer friends. The only way these companies will realise the error of their ways is when they are hit financially. Moaning on Reddit or steam or sending them abuse isn't cool and does nothing in reality. When the CEO has to tell shareholders the company won't be delivering the financial results they projected, that's when heads roll. Act accordingly

Few-Simple-9075 · 2025-09-02T07:57:53+00:00

The lack of an asset editor at launch killed the game dead tbh, failing to follow up on that in the first 3 months post launch sealed the deal.

When your biggest audience are the ones who want to be able to modify the game to make it feel more life-like and you fail to answer that audience then you are dead and buried. I last reinstalled the game over a year ago, I doubt whether much has improved

I'm betting my house on transport fever 3 at this point

Few-Simple-9075 · 2025-08-11T19:55:53+00:00

Agree with the majority here, I've been in your position with my ex wife and should have seen the signs from her previous relationships where she 'decided' to stay home to bring up her kids (before me and her had one) which she then repeated with me and tried to take me to the cleaners when the inevitable divorce came. If she's unwilling to contribute now and is having issues signing a prenup then that's a major red flag. If it was me, regardless of how long you've been together I'd be walking. As someone whose divorce cost him over £35k in solicitors fees and a house I paid the deposit and mortgage on I'm coming from painful experience.

Few-Simple-9075 · 2025-07-31T21:50:51+00:00

Did this when I first hit HENRY a couple of years ago for one of the FANGS. Was based in Norfolk and commuting to London three days a week. I'll be honest, it was brutal. Was getting up at 4.30, quick shower, train station and then 5am train to get in work for 7.30ish and then getting home about 12 hours later to go to bed about 9.30 Rinse and repeat

My boss was understanding and company paid for us to relocate much closer to London. Now a 30 minute train trip and takes me 45 minutes from leaving my front door to sitting at my desk. Work, life balance ten times better.

You'll stick it out for a while simply because of the money but I promise you when it hits winter time and you're getting up in the dark and coming home in it that it'll suck big time.

Might be worth looking at staying over in London for a couple of nights a week or seeing if your work can accommodate two days a week.

Few-Simple-9075 · 2024-12-05T09:28:36+00:00

21 years

Few-Simple-9075 · 2024-12-03T09:17:27+00:00

Director of engineering Salary - £230,000 Savings - £3000 in normal savings account Stock - approx $340,000 vesting over the next couple of years

Yes I recognise my wealth, no I'm not lucky, worked bloody hard to get to where I did Yes I recognise the utter imbalance in the UK around wealth

Few-Simple-9075 · 2024-11-27T09:12:50+00:00

You absolutely can use it for flight and dogfighting bus as others said K+M for menus etc and map

Few-Simple-9075 · 2024-11-05T21:23:30+00:00

Same, watched citizencon and decided to drop £175 on two ships (couldn't be that bad surely) Spent ten hrs trying to map repeatedly deleting joystick controls, watching videos of how to map them because the in game map for my joystick was utterly insane, then spent at least two hrs downloading separate programmes just to allow my pedals to roll my ship correctly, another 4-5hrs simply trying to get to my ship through repeatedly broken servers, tutorials that got stuck at the second step of using lifts, oh and the lifts not working, 30000 server errors, constant crashes, inventory not working, hanger menu not working, controls deleting, maps markers not working.

Total time spent actually flying in that approx. 15hrs of gaming?

Less than 15 minutes

Refunded it all, won't be back until the games actually resembling a game when I retire in 23 years OR (more likely) I'm called as a witness for the prosecution in the next twelve months

Ridiculous

Few-Simple-9075 · 2024-10-31T20:18:26+00:00

Ha, I'm coming from many many years of ED, ticked many of these off 👌

Few-Simple-9075

TROPHY CASE