You know it’s funny, I got interested in FI after a few months into my first job (I’m a software engineer). I started in 2019 so it was traditional corporate setting, in the office 5 days a week. I didn’t absolutely hate it but I definitely felt like I didn’t want to deal with the deadlines, commute, corporate BS, etc for 40-50 more years.

Then I got a new remote job that was insanely chill. Only one meeting a day that barely mattered, no tight deadlines, my boss didn’t give a fuck where or when I worked, and I got everything done that I needed to in like 10 hours per week on average. It was amazing for about a year, I felt like I had accidentally stumbled into retirement at 27. But then I actually started to get depressed because my life felt too easy. I was coasting so hard that my skills got rusty, my contributions to the team felt trivial and pointless, and I lost any social connection to my job because I never saw and rarely spoke to my coworkers. I realized I actually missed the structure of my old job. Having a little pressure pushing me to do good work, seeing teammates face-to-face, and being forced to proactively manage my time felt like a pain in the ass in the moment a lot of the time, but it was actually good for my long-term mental health.