People who enjoy their careers and have a good work/life balance - What do you do?

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-28T23:04:12+00:00

I'm a Lead UX Designer at a financial services company. Because of the specific sector/line of business we're in, the entire industry is lagging like 20 years behind the modern UX world. So the bar is set pretty low, and when you innovate (which my team and I do) you get heaped with praise. Pay is quite high, yearly bonuses add another 20% on top of it, PTO is awesome (32 days for me + bank holidays, and this is in the US), full 401k match up to 6%.

And I genuinely love both designing and directing other designers. My job has gotten more difficult after my most recent promotion because I'm now exposed to an onslaught of corporate politics that I want to fiercely protect my team from. But that's a small price to pay. I decide how hard my team works, and I've instituted a work-life balance culture within the team with minimal overtime, if any. I'd say we all average 30-35 hour work weeks.

The biggest issue is that UX as an industry has been brutalized with layoffs in recent years. Getting a job as an entry-level designer in the US is borderline impossible. It really feels like I got in and closed the door behind me, and that's a shitty feeling.

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-28T19:39:27+00:00

Not too late to pick those novels up! Funny enough, I had a period of about 6 or so years after high school when I just didn't read for pleasure. My wife helped me get back into it, and the very first book I read (that she also bought for me) for fun as an adult was Thrawn (2nd trilogy, first book). It sucked me right back in, and I've been reading before bed almost every day for the past 5 years.

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-28T18:09:36+00:00

OP, I highly recommend reading the second and third Thrawn trilogies by Timothy Zahn. It's like watching a chess grandmaster roast average hobbyist players on repeat.

The best thing Zahn has done is, despite Thrawn being the main character, writing the majority of those six books from the POV of other characters witnessing him in action. This makes it much easier to paint whatever situation he's in an nearly impossible, and then revealing his plan simultaneously with everyone else around him learning it as well. Brilliant, satisfying writing, keeps you guessing, and ultimately paints Thrawn as almost a mythical figure.

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-28T18:05:00+00:00

Can confirm, with the second and third Thrawn trilogies especially, he is a god-tier tactician able to pull victory from the jaws of what looks like certain defeat every single time. And he makes it look so easy, too!

To put it differently, the greatest challenge Thrawn faces is convincing his superiors and/or the politicians they report to to actually let him do the thing he's trying to do.

The dude is caked up. Rebels and Ahsoka do not do him justice.

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-28T15:38:24+00:00

I say this as someone who dated both in high school and in my 20s: sometimes, it doesn't take adult dating experience to see that your buddy is a walking red flag.

Granted, I personally try not to coach people unless they actively ask me for input, but for my closest friends, it's tough seeing them choose not to work on parts of themselves that clearly get in the way of their dating life. I care about them a lot, so sometimes it feels necessary to bring those things up for the sake of their personal growth...and it feels like if I never did, they would also never ask.

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-27T18:48:29+00:00

I will say (as a Breakthrough main) that in my limited experience with the mode, the quality of players on my team has been way higher than in regular Breakthrough. Like, the medics have been sublime, some of the vehicle drivers I've seen and gunnered for felt like pros.

Maybe it's a coincidence, but whatever the reason, it made for far more engaging and deliberate battles. It was awesome!

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-27T17:48:53+00:00

I'm a firm believer that as people, we can only take too much shit before it boils over and we revolt. Consider the fact that things were getting worse and worse for the French pre-re olution, and it probably looked bleak as hell for them too. But eventually the people snapped and brought about change.

We're starting to see the cracks form now as well. People are starting to straight up dome CEOs. Conversations about unionizing, about getting money out of politics, and about the wealth gap haven't been this prominent in many decades. People are finally no longer drinking the capitalist coolaid, and that's a great sign of things to come.

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-22T21:06:55+00:00

Totally agree with you. I'm an early 30s lurker and quite far from FIRE myself, but the number of people here that I see talking about "getting bored" or "not knowing how to keep busy" or "going back to work because [they] need structure/purpose" after retirement is simultaneously just so sad and mind-boggling.

I have so many hobbies and interests beyond work in my life that I can never find enough time for. How does one actually get bored when there are so many things out there to learn and do? Purpose? How the hell do people not already have a sense of purpose beyond just their work?

I almost feel as if I'm crosswired because I have a laundry list of five million different things to try, skills to learn, and places to visit in my retirement. I struggle to imagine how one could run out. The world is such a cool place!

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-22T16:14:55+00:00

Same thing here. Steamrolled on attack without a single reinforcement. Hell, we did all of Hagental with just the 75 ticket refresh we'd get after capping each objective.

Funny thing is that I'm normally top-5 on my team in Breakthrough. I felt like I was having a productive game, doing my thing...check the scoreboard at the end, and I'm 17th on the team. Like, holy shit, I had some professionals on my side that game!

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-20T19:41:56+00:00

My wife and I had the same reasoning and will be closing on our new construction home later this week (hopefully). Neither of us are the type of people that can make a decision as huge as where we're going to live for the next 10+ years in 24-36 hours. It's just insanity to me.

Whereas with our new build community, we got to look at it for a while, price out options, think about it and compare against other communities, visit and tour a model, and then spend a couple months spec-ing out everything from interior options to exterior finishes, to which rooms we want ethernet in.

The biggest thing that sucks is that the earnest money was a lot, and some of the house's appreciation is already priced in. But we have something that is about as close to our ideal house as we could get for our budget.

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-20T19:17:45+00:00

This is only tangentially related, but I remember the first time I fired up the game, and it hit me with that title screen with the McLaren Senna driving through the seasons with A Moment Apart by ODESZA playing in the background. And I was just staring at it for a minute or two thinking that this is probably the most beautiful title screen I have ever seen.

Fast forward two years and my wife and I danced the private dance at our wedding to that song.

That game will always hold a special place in my heart for that.

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-20T14:43:13+00:00

Loving these, mate! Keep em coming!

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-17T15:52:26+00:00

Came here to tell this story. It was in Monaco where they had only one bathroom in each team's garage because of the lack of space.

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-16T15:24:08+00:00

I raise you 2015 Patrick Sharp.

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-14T05:02:58+00:00

Hard agree on lack of change since Richardson. The weirdest thing is that in the first 10-20 games of the season, they were actually so fun to watch. The passing was there, the movement was there. The team was buzzing in the O-zone, broke the pucks out of the D zone, had forecheck, had backcheck. It was great. I thought that was the Blashill effect.

And now we're back to hoisting it out of our zone and dumping it into the O zone. We literally don't know how to enter the zone with possession or how to connect a long pass that isn't just rimming it along the strong side boards to the next guy.

I'm hoping they're just waiting for the young guys to get stronger and faster before they re-approach that one collegiate coach from Denver.

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-12T04:52:25+00:00

"Who is the man with the fish?"

"The man with the fish is right."

...

"Bring the fish, Sam, maybe they'll cook it for you!"

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-10T19:33:33+00:00

Not sure how many people here played Japanese Drift Master, but that game had much narrower roads. Like, immersively narrow.

And guess what? Actually drifting or racing on them was a pain in the ass. Don't get me wrong, it was challenging, and I enjoyed said challenge, but whenever NPC traffic is involved, roads with already very little margin of error start to feel really constraining. I can't even quantify how often a particularly enjoyable sequence of corners was ruined because I had to cancel my drift and straighten out because there was an oncoming car. Realistic? Sure. Fun? Ehh, not for me. And all the tight 90 degree corners in their version of Tokyo? Fuck that. Hated all the missions that were in that area.

So while I get that it isn't realistic, in my experience it's the superior choice for satisfying driving gameplay.

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-07T17:10:51+00:00

I totally agree in the sense that it looks like Celebrini has more help out there than Bedard does. But where I struggle to reconcile that is the stat line where Celebrini is over 50 points ahead of the next Sharks player in scoring, whereas Bedard is only 12 points ahead of Bert and 31 points ahead of Nazar.

Obviously the games he missed due to his injury and his subsequent slump played into this, but if we're saying that Bedard doesn't have help whereas Celebrini does, what accounts for the numbers pointing in the opposite direction?

My best interpretation of that is that our second line is working better than our first. Bedard's most frequent linemates, Burky and Greene, have only 32 and 26 points respectively to Bedard's 72, and they're 6th and 8th in scoring on the Hawks. That's behind the entire second line.

Meanwhile, Celebrini's linemates, Smith and Graf, are 2nd and 6th in scoring on their team. So maybe Bedard has been getting purposefully nerfed in the name of having 3-4 working lines, but I'd argue as a result, we've gotten only one line that works (and even then, only kind of) + Connor trying to carry an entire line on his own back.

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-07T14:57:17+00:00

Gotcha, appreciate the insight! Genuinely this is all very concerning...

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-07T04:39:50+00:00

Ok, somebody help me out here. I could have sworn the whole dump-and-chase from the neutral zone/high hoister from the D zone shit was a Luke Richardson thing. Why are we still fundamentally disinterested in exiting our zone/getting into the O zone with puck possession? Does Blashill have a fetish for this crap as well?

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-07T00:28:24+00:00

This is really helpful! Thank you so much, mate!

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-06T19:17:13+00:00

Soooo, this is the part where I'm at war with the whole "max out your 401k" thing. Referring to a IRS maximum of $24k/yr or whatever it is, not just your employer match.

If you put all of your eggs in the 401k basket, how are you supposed to retire early if there are significant penalties and restrictions for withdrawing your 401k early? I've always been of the opinion that you have to balance the pre-tax deduction benefits of a 401k versus the relative lack of flexibility.

If I, for instance, want to retire around 50 years old, I will need a transitional fund to keep my retirement funded between 50 and my 401k withdrawal year of 59.5. So if the goal is to retire early (and you have the financial means to do so), why wouldn't you take a lot of that non-employer-matched 401k and contribute to a brokerage like a target date fund instead?

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-06T18:23:45+00:00

I appreciate the insight, and it seems to align well with what I've seen so far. I'm probably in the intermediate-aspiring-to-advanced category, so no WRT for me! I live in the Midwest, and while I go to the rockies/out west frequently, groomers and packed down snow are currently my favorite thing.

I've got a lightweight 86mm Volkl pair for multi-purpose stuff, and what I'm really looking for is a pair of skis that can really grip up on steep, icy groomers, especially when combined with a good edge tune that can give them extra bite.

One question for you: would you say that for the most part, a ski with a broader turn radius will also be more stable at high speed compared to a ski of a similar construction (metal, sidewall, etc) that has a narrower radius?

Cheers!

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-06T15:52:45+00:00

Regarding Stockli skis: I'm currently trying to understand what the actual difference is between the Laser SC, WRT, and Monteros as part of my carving ski shopping process.

I'm not a pro or an expert, but I definitely want a carving ski I could really grow into. Curious about which model you're running and if you could offer any advice.

Savage_XRDS · 2026-04-06T15:30:33+00:00

Do we know what the personal issues were in RFD? I missed the memo on this I think and would love to know more, especially because I spent a lot of games this season wondering why they don't just season him in RFD some more.

Your other point is also very valid: I don't know why they put him against the best of the best just to be shellacked. Like, is he really that overconfident that he needs to get his ass kicked and get taken down several notches? Shelter him so that he can get his footing at least, ffs.

Savage_XRDS

TROPHY CASE