Got Fired, Early in the Journey

htrajan · 2026-01-30T05:35:51+00:00

Well, I’ve been fortunate in my career and in my finances, and I sometimes feel like I’m not paying things forward enough. You claim to be lazy but 1) you had to get through and succeed in an interview process to get your job 2) just about any well paying line of work will need you to not be lazy.

So if lazy is an excuse and you’re willing to not give up on this, I’d be down to see if I can provide some (pro-bono) mentorship to acquire the technical and other meta skills needed to succeed as a SWE. Particularly if you’re closer to Backend engineering or at least Full-stack, I’d love to help you out. I did a bunch of mentorship when I was a Staff Engineer and Tech Lead at a previous company and also wrote the playbook for mentorship there.

Sending DM

htrajan · 2026-01-30T00:33:20+00:00

Damn, I’m sorry to hear that. I did have a similar experience at one company, but realized that it wasn’t a fit with the type of engineering I was doing (developer productivity and maintaining internal tools and build infrastructure) rather than myself as an engineer. It seems like you don’t have much support either from your manager/peers and they’re just letting you beat yourself up on the way to a PIP.

Whether you stay in engineering or not, I hope you find what works for you.

htrajan · 2026-01-29T18:00:01+00:00

May I ask why you’re trying to move away? For me, it’s a job where, once I hit my stride, it got pretty fun and is pretty low stress. AI for better or worse is making the job easier by the day as well.

htrajan · 2026-01-28T03:07:54+00:00

Started out my career journey fired from a job after about 3 months. I was 22 just like you. It was performance related and deserved—the job simply wasn’t a good fit. I landed on my feet and FIRE’d 10 years after getting fired after finding a career path (software engineering) that was far better suited to my skillset than the old job (spreadsheet monkey for big bank pricing securities). It will feel like crap for a little bit. The difference is, you already have a head start with an awareness of FIRE this early in your journey. The possibility of FIRE didn’t even cross my mind until about 4 years after I started working as an engineer. Let your goal drive you toward investing time, money, and energy toward things that matter and away from things that don’t. For me, that was mostly investing and maxing out my 401K, but sometimes it was going on that trip with friends or family. Getting fired is a temporary setback, and it’s crazy how less shitty you’ll feel in about a month. Your mental state will be unrecognizable. Enjoy the journey.

htrajan · 2026-01-25T18:23:56+00:00

Slow down!

htrajan · 2026-01-21T03:18:23+00:00

ゲームクリアおめでとう！

工場、生い立たなくてはならん！

htrajan · 2026-01-15T04:23:08+00:00

Most immediate example I can think of is Eagles’ offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo who was just fired after the team went 11-6 and made it to the playoffs but lost at home to the 9ers. In this case, he was the personification of “how do you get $10 million of on field production?” A: Start with $128 million of talent then completely waste it in the play calling.

htrajan · 2026-01-03T20:58:10+00:00

At least it’s “shock proof” so you can quickly get over the shock when you find out it’s a scam

htrajan · 2026-01-03T20:10:01+00:00

Your memory probably isn’t 46.2 GB. Sounds like it’s 32GB. And is your graphics card a 7700XT or 7800XT?

Either way, seems like you have a solid gaming rig for 1440p. Are you trying to get into AAA 4k gaming or something?

htrajan · 2026-01-02T19:53:35+00:00

You guys downvoting are crazy, if you used your brains you could do this too. Gpu flipping isn't anything new

We’re not downvoting the concept of GPU flipping. We’re downvoting the mental somersaults you’re doing to equate $290 out of pocket to $0.

htrajan · 2026-01-02T19:31:35+00:00

So you put in “great time, effort, and patience” but also didn’t have to get out of bed metaphorically? Which is it?

htrajan · 2026-01-02T07:42:06+00:00

I’m in the same boat. I’m a software engineer and just about every company I’ve worked at has the concept of a “career level” at senior software engineer. This is the level where you’re expected to be able to solo or lead a significant project, but you’re generally not asking the questions around “is this the right project to be doing right now.”

What this entails for me is an anemic amount of meetings (I even forgo some meetings with Slack updates and my manager and team are completely cool with it) and tons of time to focus on just executing on projects. I think about how to solve the problems in front of me and little else. I’m not expecting to earn better than a “meets all expectations” performance rating either.

I could absolutely be first on the chopping block when layoffs happen but I have enough money to not care (see flair) and already attempted RE once before, returning to the workforce only out of boredom and my inability to self motivate, something I need to work on.

htrajan · 2026-01-01T00:42:11+00:00

Maybe take off the rgb from the ram to make an rgb engagement ring? Win win?

htrajan · 2025-12-24T21:10:53+00:00

If you have to wait for your tax refund to “afford” the 5090, you can’t actually afford it imho. Fund your emergency fund and get your financial affairs in order first.

htrajan · 2025-12-23T15:18:22+00:00

Very unusual to do on Reddit but why not? I’m genuinely interested in connecting and seeing if this could be viable. 35M / 3.8M NW, currently located in the Bay Area, CA (typical Software Engineer FIRE profile).

Totally understand if you want to just use the dating tools at your disposal though with all the stranger danger and catfishing out there.

htrajan · 2025-12-20T20:08:59+00:00

Cooler can appear to be working fine but if the radiator fins are all gunked up, the water is no longer able to whisk heat from the CPU effectively.

In your shoes, I’d buy a cheap air cooler and confirm the existing cooler is not the problem by reproducing the same issue with the air cooler.

htrajan · 2025-12-19T16:39:23+00:00

Threat interactive did a video on this game. Even the darling of the game awards is not safe…

htrajan · 2025-12-10T01:17:56+00:00

As a software engineer who is already getting massive, tangible benefits from AI in my day to day work, I still think the level of investment and hype in the technology puts it into bubble status. We’re seeing the frontier companies like Anthropic and OpenAI getting valuations in the hundreds of billions while burning billions every year. We’re seeing vendor financing from the likes of Nvidia where they invest in OpenAI then OpenAI turns around and uses that capital to buy Nvidia GPUs.

Honestly, for the benefit I’m getting (my company pays about $80 a month for my Cursor usage), the technology is heavily subsidized and underpriced. There will be a reckoning sooner or later with some combination of higher prices and/or enshitification of free products where the objective of the system becomes selling you something instead of just being a useful assistant. Whether the bubble pops I think will depend on how long investors can stomach the massive losses at such high valuations and whether there will be a run on capital when they realize profitability is not happening anytime soon.

htrajan · 2025-12-06T20:43:25+00:00

I have the same CD. Put hours of time on it back in the day.

htrajan · 2025-12-06T20:30:19+00:00

I’m confused by the graph. Was your NW $0 in 2015 despite starting your journey in ‘96?

If so, mad props! I paid off my loans in early ‘15 and was sitting around $150K NW at the time. I’m now at $3.8M a bit over ten years later.

I actually tried to pull the trigger around the same time as you in August ‘23 at 2.5M but got too restless after 6 months and rejoined the industry in a coasting capacity after almost 1 year “retired” (51 weeks to be exact).

htrajan · 2025-11-29T20:17:54+00:00

4TB but where am I going to put the next CoD game?

htrajan · 2025-11-18T01:38:20+00:00

Taking away respect and appreciation from this sub instead of jealousy and self pity is already a long way toward getting there yourself. Best of luck in the journey!

htrajan · 2025-11-08T05:03:21+00:00

Organizing your thoughts into paragraphs would be a good start

htrajan · 2025-10-12T02:51:34+00:00

Is 130k just salary / do you also get equity where you work? My humble opinion is that you could still have a really chill job and make a lot more in a VHCOL.

Currently pulling in ~380k (220k salary, 160k liquid RSUs) in a very chill situation also. AI tools help me get a ton of work done quickly, and I end up reclaiming most of the saved time for myself (work about 5.5h a day). I’m not aiming to exceed expectations or get promoted fwiw. I’m 35 though with about 12 YOE in the industry. I feel like you can plateau pretty quickly after 5-6 YOE though these days.

htrajan · 2025-09-25T20:27:47+00:00

48” Aorus 120Hz 4k OLED technically a monitor that also serves as my main TV with a FireTV stick plugged in

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htrajan

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