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He’s retired on his fortune. He’s just spending it playing farmer
A friend of mine who works tech in California raises fancy breeds of pigs at his ranch/house. They don't do many but because of the rare breeds and because it's california and actual fresh butchered meat is a super premium thing, he makes quite a lot of money from it.
That's neat. Glad he's living the dream. We don't get a lot of things to really care about.
If we ever find something that moves us like that, we better hold on to it tightly. Things just slip from your fingers when you least expect it.
Never heard slaughtering pigs described as 'neat' before...
Yep. When my MIL retired from being a law professor she became a “blueberry farmer.”
Cosplaying every part of farming without the stress and general poverty sounds fucking divine
If you like putting in the work, sure.
I grew up on a hobby farm/mini homestead - big vegetable garden, apple orchard, berry bushes all over, no livestock, and wanted to "get back to my roots" when I retired. So we bought 2 acres, and...
I married a city boy who has no clue, he wants the property to be pristinely kept up and it's a lot. And I am in a totally different growing environment, which throws off what I thought I knew. Three years later, I'm all, "thank God I didn't jump into getting chickens or beekeeping, because the gardening alone is harder than I remember."
So now we're saving up to build a house on a much smaller lot overlooking his golf course. We can afford to do this because we sold our souls to the DoD for 50 years combined, and the pensions and healthcare are pretty nice.
Yeah it does sound divine. And for the record, I come from a farming background, or rather my parents had been farmers. I still helped out a lot even as a little kid, and that farming shit is damn hard. One failed season can screw up everything, bad weather among other things - droughts, floods, locusts, predators eating your livestock. It's amazing to me we have come so far with agriculture, because that is no joke.
Knowing what I know, I would never be a farmer willingly. You couldn't pay me to do it, my parents also had a dairy at one point, and it was getting up every morning at 3-4am in the morning to start the day. Never again do I even want to see a farm again, thank you.
Those farmer cosplayers can keep their fantasy, I don't want the reality ever again.
It's not cosplay if you're doing the work. You don't have to be poor to be a real farmer.
Yeah it does sound divine. And for the record, I come from a farming background, or rather my parents had been farmers. I still helped out a lot even as a little kid, and that farming shit is damn hard. One failed season can screw up everything, bad weather among other things - droughts, floods, locusts, predators eating your livestock. It's amazing to me we as humans have come so far with agriculture, because that is no joke. It basically shaped our civilizations throughout history.
Knowing what I know, I would never be a farmer willingly. You couldn't pay me to do it, my parents also had a dairy at one point, and it was getting up every morning at 3-4am in the morning to start the day. Never again do I even want to see a farm again, thank you.
I don't want the reality ever again, I do admit though that I'm glad if someone wants to farm. Done right it's a beautiful thing, and there are many great farmers.
Good on the people going into farming who want to, seriously they can enjoy it. It might actually be more fulfulling than what they've had. As long as they are responsible farmers and enjoy it. I just hate the glorified view of it all, thanks to tiktok mostly. Maybe tiktok has just managed to jade me to most things, probably.
There really is more nuance to this though.
Farmer cosplayers? Sounds like you have some issues to work through.
This is just hobbyist farmers or farmers selling premium food products (depends on if it is profitable or not).
If they are not making money but doing because they enjoy it, good for them. If they are making money, also good for them.
BTW, what is wrong with cosplaying? 🤔
I think it is the part where people are posting videos of them doing bread baking, play gardening (not actually giving useful info and just acting at it) for YouTube views, then you find out her oven is going for 35k and her husband works for JetBlue or some shit.
Basically the load of bull of "anyone can do it!" Like become a billionaire if they "only work hard enough" but the reality is that they are marketing idealism.
Sort of like people getting pedigree dogs for their kids and then wanting to sell the untrained, unhousebroken dog at a premium when their kid gets bored because "it's a rare breed!".
That is some tradwife/influencer/YouTuber/cottagecore BS and I have no desire to defend it as a statement of reality or as a business where the main activity is to trick consumers into buying shitty overpriced products.
But if someone is growing blueberries after a successful tech career and they either make a profit (with the aid of considerable money, sure) or they do it for fun, I have no issues with this. Live and let people live, I'd say.
No reasons to be a gatekeeper about legitimate farming and gardening, whether it is a business or personal hobby.
You asked what the issue was and I was trying to give my view.
I am stuck working for a company because I cannot hold up to the consistent manual labor demanded of farming (asthmatic).
But I do enjoy getting to work with animals, make bread, and home cook meals, as well as some "domestic hobbies".
I want more people into it and enjoying it because we need more things in life we can enjoy since so much is oit of reach so for many.
I don't know why a person would choose geese tho. All of them I have met have been assholes.
Makes eating them even more satisfying!
Makes sense. The hardest part about raising what's basically hobby livestock for food is getting too attached. I don't know that that's going to be a problem in this case.
Especially if you don't come from a farming background in the first place. I'm semi rural, and one of my D&D buddies last weekend came in with a bunch of pictures of his pigs, Dumpling and Chonker. Including pictures of my friend holding their decapitated heads after he slaughtered them last week. My soft townie heart was blown away by how proud he was of the whole thing.
I can understand that giving animals a good life even while they're being raised for food, with personal effort going into it, would be a point of pride - the whole bit of knowing that you've ensured there's as little harm being done by the source of at least some of your food.
And I'm glad someone can do it because holy crap I can't. I got all weepy over talking about culling a rooster that was hurting a friend's other chickens and menacing his kids. And that thing was objectively an asshole.
Oh, for sure, I'd much rather George raised and slaughtered animals than factory farms. I've had to rebrainwash myself into thinking meat spontaneously appears at supermarkets after learning about how animals are treated.
I really hope lab grown meat is good enough to make the whole issue irrelevant!
I really wish cows were jerks. Beef is too tasty.
Yes, This is the issue with me and "farm animals"...getting too attached to any ONE animal and.... you suddenly don't feel good when it comes Time to "process"
They're assholes for a reason - they're security. They are actually really territorial so they're good for an early warning system. We had a couple of geese on the farm when I was a kid, my dad said it was some of the best security because they sound the alarm if something is wrong.
As a farmer, their is a difference between farming with money and farming for money
He won capitalism and was able to pursue his passion. We should celebrate that this man was able to. We’re here to figure out how we make that happen for more people, without the capitalism, not just whine and moan about current working conditions.
Stardew Valley IRL
I would kill to have an envelope filled with unspeakable fortune 😫 (aka a ticket to an all expenses paid cabin where I can chill with chickens all day)
You might need to feed the chicken if you want to keep having eyes
Man's just chugging goose mayonnaise and feeding quartz to the locals
I mean 22 years at Microsoft. Fully understand the goose farmer. Dude could have put attempt at pop singer and I’d still understand.
Probably didn't want to list a gig that was only a couple weeks long, its understandable.
So what exactly is it you do here?
I'm a goose farmer.
See those geese? I farm them.
It's such an interesting farming choice. What does he do with them?
Sell them to other silicon Valley goose farmers?
Supply new state parks with geese for their ponds?
Feed them tiny encrypted messages with Microsoft's trade secrets, and sell them to Google?
So replacing all of the armed guards at Microsoft with angry geese guards - check!
Till the soil, plant the goose seeds, water them, watch them grow.
Ducking good for him. I hope it's more fulfilling than working for a Mega Corp. One day I hope I'll be able to do the same.
*Honkingly good
HONK
HONK HONK HONK insert further happy goose noises
Honk, quack, chirp… it’s all for the birds
yes im with you on that. I started getting into gardening and learning about foraging. Id like to be as independant from money as i can be some day.
I worked in tech for most of my life. Couple of years ago took a job as a school caretaker. I wouldn't want to go back.
Worked in tech for 12 years. They were the right 12 years. Stopped doing so in my 30s. Did a load of voluntary work for a decade or so. Got elected to local government. Created free swimming lessons for underprivileged kids (proud of that one). Now live mostly on a subtropical beach and manage a couple of small holiday lets. Just doing one up with an amazing home cinema and arcade room atm: letting people live the dream that I’d had killed for in my twenties, and paying me for it 😉
Living the fucking dream!!
Ducking*
Goose, not duck. So it's a honking dream! 😂🪿
Damn it! I missed them both
Schmuck, not even a remote WFH job
Beginner mistake, honestly. That's why the current meta is keeping all of your geese in your living room
Could be a way of explaining a gap, and what are they going to ask for proof of, pictures of geese? Geese receipts? Geese farmer W2?
Farmer here, we farmers mail each other a lot of 1099's. The guy who swaths my hay gets a 1099 from me. The guy who rents my pasture sends me a 1099. The grain elevator sends me a tax document of all the grain I've sold from Jan 1 to Dec 31st. For stuff like fuel and parts, I keep all receipts for 5 years incase of an audit
Damn. They are something else. It always has to be this gaslighting thing with corporations, instead of the truth.
They are playing a dangerous game with people's mental health.
"Performance issues" is the default excuse that companies make for firing a person. I was fired because I didn't want to do unpaid overtime like the rest of the people on my team. I ended up winning the case in unemployment court because hard evidence trumps HR bullshit.
The gaslighting can take its toll but its easier to deal with once you understand what's going on. The name of the game is (legally) record and document everything. Fight back with a massive paper trail.
Ouch 🥹🥹🥹🥹
What team was he working on? Poor dude on one hand, but on the other hand I hope he’s taking a well deserved break with his geese. 🪿
Oof, don't ever admit to that
That said, 25 years? He's just getting tired or they want fresh blood
Maybe instead of being full of shit they just.. didn't scavenge through this guy's profile because nobody usually yaps on LinkedIn about how they got fired.
No. OP saw this on twitter and made an assumption in order to push an agenda and mine some karma. I agree with the ‘agenda’ in principle, but OP is still full of shit for making an assumption. This type of content works against us by decreasing credibility. It’s objectively bad and we need to do better.
Edit: twitter thread where the screenshot was posted https://x.com/HeroDividend/status/1785453269940043855
I think I know this guy lol
Standard stock option response. Make a shedload of money. Retire early. Do what you want.
This is called retirement..
He's definitely a millionaire at this point, he was in the golden age of the tech industry. Of course he can afford to goose farm.
Nah, he got in too late to be one of those millionaires. He'd have needed to start at MS closer to 30 years ago. Biggest money were the guys who started in the 80s. By Y2K, the "glory years" were gone. It has been "stack and rank" since then.
I know a few people like that, resigned from high paying jobs, sold their houses in larger cities and bought a small farm in the countryside. The truth is that the money they have from their "previous" life is what they're living from, and the money they make now from selling sourdough bread or herbal tees is pocket money. Not a bad life, but usually not what you'd call a "real" farmer
More like early retirement.
This is what homesteaders on YT rarely mention. Even the top channels are not anywhere close to self sustaining. The projects are money and time sinks.
1 million vlog episodes in is when a good number of them reveal that they either still hold a part time gig or are living on a kick@ pension.
Real farmers rely on economies of scale and long term contracts with suppliers and lines of credit with banks to have any chance of being a profitable venture. These people are so obviously LARPing that it’s baffling to think there are people who really believe raising a bunch of chickens and selling eggs and organic produce at the local farmer’s market is a viable “job”.
The same happens with van life influencers. What kind of middle class person can afford to sink $100k on a rapidly depreciating asset when that money could be put towards buying a house? You can’t even get a mortgage or a commercial loan for a conversion van to begin with, it’s all out of pocket. Where does the audience think the money comes from?
Seriously. I'd take up farming in a heartbeat if it'd pay what I'm earning now, but the cost of entry is so high, you either have to inherit or start wealthy enough that neither you nor your kids ever have to work.
My grandpa bought his first quarter section with his earnings cutting wood for a couple seasons. Quarter section of some of the cheapest farmland nowhere near a city around here would cost me 100% off my gross earnings from my high paying skilled trades position for nearly six years.
Gate keeping farming?
Hey, those lobbyists paid a lot of money to establish Agricultural Law loopholes for themselves. Who the hell do you think you are benefiting from their loopholes!
I'm sorry but I struggle with calling a farmer someone who can't differentiate a dairy cow from a meat cow or canola from sunflower (and yes this is based on real conversations with people who decided to quit their IT jobs and become "farmers")
Everyone starts somewhere.
Of course! But it would seem like a smarter move to learn a little about the topic, and do some internships (which are available where I live) before investing 400k+€ in buying a farm, and then realize that you have no idea how to grow wheat (so now the field next to mine sits empty...)
Not all “farming” is livestock or crops…
I am aware of that. But if you want to start your farm where you plant wheat to make sourdough bread, having a basic understanding of how wheat grows seems like a good starting point, that some of these people didn't have. I'm just talking about seeing a few plots of land changing owners every 2-3 years when people realize that farming isn't that easy and needs knowledge and skills
I tried goose farming as my first retirement career move.
The little bastards kept dying.
I couldn’t figure out if I was planting them too deep, or too close together.
Same energy for Sysadmins, just with goats.
https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4l7kjd/found_a_text_file_at_work_titled_why_should_i/
My literal 10 year goal is to retire as a goat farmer. I've been in IT for nearly 20 years and it's a slog every day. Lol
Enjoy your goat farming when you get it. My grandpa had goats, Boerbokke to be exact, they're very popular among farmers here in South Africa. And they're so stinking cute! But they ate everything, even my grandma's flower beds, and nearly ended up in the pot for that one.
Goats have the curse of being very tasty when curried.
Jesus leave them alone lol, worry about yourself.
I imagine he has ALOT of money. If I was wealthy like that I'd also retire what is most likely early and just do something I wanted to do. Also geese are amazing.
You’d have to have some expensive vice like gambling to work at MSFT since 2001 and not walk out a multi-millionaire. Especially if you were a senior developer for some of the most crucial products of that company during your time.
Bill Gates:
Gates: “Farming? Not even toilet designer? Filthy casual.”
Comments bashing this guy who did his fair time at a high technical skill job and then decided to peace out is concerning. If you're going to be on r/antiwork, learn some nuance. Did he do well for his time? Heck yeah, he was a software engineer in the right decade for the right company. Did he probably earn crumbs off of the value he made for MS? Almost definitely. Even more certainly, do you think his managers gave him those stock options at a loss?
Seriously, remember who the enemy is. It ain't this guy, and probably not even this guy's managers, they still worked for a wage, unlike the primary shareholders.
I'm also a software engineer for a company probably a tier or two below what you'd consider MS to be, and even though I'm very fortunate to have no college debt, I'm still struggling to make the leap to buy a starter home after several years in a very average-to-low region of the US. Things aren't even close to the same as they were 22 yrs 4 mos ago for this guy. Considering how much things have advanced since then, we should be demanding answers and solutions from politicians regarding why we're in the dark ages compared to then.
And I bet he is finally happy.
Might wanna rethink goose farming with H1N5 birdflu cases on the rise
That’s great, I hope he is happy
Mans out here living his dream retiring and getting away from work you’re mocking him. Dense much?
Good for him
Now he is living the dream. I’d love to quit my 9-5 and be a goat farmer.
"Azure Performance Team"
He's never gonna get the ducks to hatch
Dude would have millions in stocks stashed away, guarantee it's a tiny hobby farm with no intention of ever making money
I have a job that has me interacting with small to mid range farmers. A surprisingly large number of them made their fortune else where and are now just enjoying life farming. The profit just isn't big enough vs the risk to be a great primary choice without extreme scale.
Sounds good. He probably retired on his wealth and is now living life :)
One of my co-worker left the job too to become a chicken farmer.
He then told me later it was a million dollars business.
This is literally what my dad did, worked at Microsoft for 23 years and became a farmer…. This deadass may be him.
This sounds like one of my old bosses. He too was in IT and then he moved to the country and started goat farming.
FYIFV
A Millionaire decided to start a hobby farm.
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1mo
Guarantee he’s a lot happier.
20 yrs in Hollywood. Built two restaurants. Park Ranger now. Don’t miss the grind…….
My IT friends and I all joke about retiring and becoming king wood workers. We have garages full of tools and enjoy it as a hobby. But every time the workload gets to be BS we always think about it. I know there are loads of IT workers in the same boat too
From rubberduck programming to Goose farming
He's doing what he loves
You should see my resume, yeah looking at the same thing.
I provide tech support to enterprise level internet circuits. I want to switch to farming i just dont have a way into the field. I think i would be much happier as a ranch hand working dairy cows or herding sheep or goats or something. I did a little of it in foster care because my foster parents made me. That work is more enjoyable than troubleshooting billion dollar circuits and being yelled at for not doing it fast enough.
Both thunderhead289 and Aging wheels on YouTube have tech backgrounds and prefer working on cars. Maybe people yearn for a simpler life when they can afford to drop out of the rat race.
I should change mine to spider plant propagater
This is the dream.
Early retirement and wee house with a shed in a field with a couple of donkeys in it and some kind of water near by to stare at for days on end with my two pals.
The wife and kids may or may not be in the dream.
Being a farmer is hard work. I’m not sure if that’s good or not looll
It's supposed to rain tonight. I've spent a solid 16 hours in the seat of the tractor for the last 3 days trying to get as much planting done before that as possible lol. If it actually rains, you bet your ass that I'm sleeping in tomorrow
lol I was at my last org for 20 years then moved into performance analysis (at the same org) and lasted three months. Had to get out. Left the org completely.
Not just a farmer, a goose farmer!
Mess with the honk, you get the bonk!
Living the dream
22 years at MS ending in 2023? Yeah bro had millions and millions.
Found the guy Stardew Valley is about
Laid off maybe?
Ya know what? Good for them! I really hope he loves farming
Pretty sure that's called retirement. Lol
There's this really weird game on iOS and android called "Tingus Goose". Kind of like goose farming. I wonder if that's what they mean, they're just really deep into the game.
They most probably retired. Plus Microsoft is probably better than most big tech when it comes to treating their employees.
"it is a simple life"
Living the dream.
It’s great that he was able to get this promotion, though I do worry that a mere human won’t be able to grasp the subtleties of goose software architecture. They use very advanced AI tools. Mainly to make gifs of themselves dancing, to be honest, but the tools are very advanced.
NGL, I'm in the same boat. I've been in IT for 3 decades and I'm just so very very tired of it. I would give my left testicle to simply do something besides tech and bring in the same or similar income. 🫤
I blame homesteading tiktok
I use to live in Redmond and I can tell you for a fact that 95% of Microsoft employees are absolutely miserable. It must be an awful place to work.
Microsoft employees are the rudest to any customer service position. It's like they get off work and they feel the need to take out their anger on society.
I used to want to want to work in that sector in that region but after watching my subordinate get spat on for like the 5th time that I decided I should live off grid in central WA instead.
Pretty common in tech actually
Good for him
I had a friend/colleague that was like this. He was a good talker so he fell up the corporate ladder at our company then got a WFH position at Microsoft where he did maybe an hour of work per day... and he hated it. He only did it because his wife wanted the high life. If it was up to him, he wouldn't even have electricity at his house. He could not stand that he had to work like 5 hours a week on a computer making over $100k/yr. He just wanted to be a self sufficient farmer but there was no way his wife was going for it.
I'm just gonna leave this here:
Principal Solutions Architect at Microsoft is $332K–$550K per year
Unless he was a compete dumbass with his money, he's retired and living very very fat and happy doing whatever he wants. Which in this case apparent is goose farming.
in Hooterville?
Sounds like living the dream to me
Probably had fuck you money with stock options. Good on him
And? This is a shitty take. He’s doing what he wants and probably already made a fuckton of money.
We should all be so lucky.
Huh? Im pretty sure what you said is what OP is implying
🤓 is never used as a compliment
Dude was a principle engineer at Microsoft for 20 years. He’s probably utterly loaded on stock and compensation from that whole period.
I’d fuck off and do something fun too if I were him.
Kind of the running joke amongst burned out tech people.
I worked for MS pre Satya. Have only heard from people that it went downhill. Not that it was so great under Ballmer, but once you have a Hindu as CEO they offshore everyones jobs to other Hindus.
H1B's are basically just replacement visas so megacorporations can get cheap labor any way they possibly fucking can, they are trying to saturate the tech market so that they can pay low salaries
This does not even make sense . A lot of tech companies hire from India and china .since that’s where the majority of the engineers are from . Try hiring in Europe and America and then see for yourself . I don’t even know how you got an entire religion into this !
They hire because they are dirt cheap compared to US labor.
Call any large organization tech support and find out. First line is always India or Phillipines, because there are a lot of people with passable English. They don't know much and read out of a book. To get any real helpful you usually need to escalate to a north American based L3 group.
I agree hiring in India is dirt cheap and that’s why most companies hire there . I am an Indian and I don’t take offence to that . What I did take offence to you in your earlier response was for the use of the word “ Hindu “ which is a religion . Now coming to passable English let me assure you that a lot of Indians and Filipino are much more educated and better than an average American and most stats prove that. And your so called escalation line to a NA region spec is nothing but again an Indian . It’s just a farce that you think you are talking to an American .
You make a point that L3 is increasingly Indian. That's the crux of the problem and likely why the OP is saying the dude became a farmer. That's the joke. MS/Google etc are laying off the higher paid, more experienced workers for cheap H1B workers that got churned out of diploma mills and did a certificate crash course but have next to zero real life experience. But hey you can get 3-4 of them for every layoff.
It also doesn’t follow what literally everyone else says about Satya and Microsoft now. OP seems to be anti-Hindu and carry a big old chip on their shoulder about Satya being that specific type of Indian.
I used to work at MS and know a few people that got let go recently. Most are independently wealthy and have taken up passion jobs like photography, farming and the like
It's quite interesting to think about.... wasn't Bill Gates one of the biggest buyers of farmland?
Never mind goose farmer... I wish I was a goose...
If he didn't sell slowly during the 22y he's a multi millionaire. So good for him...
The heart wants what it wants 🤷♂️
Why geese? What is he-- suicidal? Geese are godless killing machines. Vile beasts.
It was my grandfather's dream, retire and farm until the money ran out. He raised goats.
Corporate burnout makes you dream about - and pursue - opportunities that may have seemed outlandish once upon a time. Good for him!
Have you ever farmed? It’s hard, but very rewarding work.
I would do it if I could.
Lmao someone cant tell when someone retired with a fat bank account
Living the dream. I too would love to change my life in this way. Working Ina software company can burn you out.
Guy sitting next to me on an airplane a few years ago told me he retired from his first job as an engineer at Google after 18 years. Timing was great for him and he didn't have to work for a living anymore. Now in his mid 40s, he consults in an area that always interested him (I don't recall what it is, but pretty sure he didn't say goose farmer), and he gets to work for fun. When I asked what it was like working for Google, he said it was stressful, exciting, difficult, and he was grateful for the position it put him in today. Now he makes less money but is feeling gratified. Nice position to be in at 40-something years old.
This reminds me of the soon-to-be 3x NBA MVP Nikola Jokic, who will one day retire from being a basketball legend to follow his true passion of spending time with his horses.
I plan to go this route in the next 5 years .
How do you just farm one of 'em? Feels like you would need a gaggle.
vested out at a guess, farming geese sounds dangerous though
I love geese. This is living the fucking dream for me, but I can barely take care of myself and managed to kill a succulent, so maybe having a farm full of geese isn't such a good idea. Good for him, though. It's like he's living in Stardew Valley.
I used to work with a guy in Cruise ship casinos (in the 80’s when it was still an enjoyable job). He saved every penny and moved to West Wales to open a pig farm.
I remember sitting on a beach in Barbados with him and him telling me how much he was looking forward to his new life.
I hope he is still happy. Nice guy, if not barking mad.
Wow chehalis. I grew up in the next town over. Shout out to crystal meth.
i wonder if he’s happy
Sounds a bit like the goldshaw farm youtuber. Before that he was in corporate insurance sales in DC.
Not any ole farmer. A goose farmer 😂 man’s just chillin with geese
❤️❤️❤️
Bad time to be a goose farmer...
Probably rich after working at MS that long. When you are rich, you can retire and do whatever you want.
You need to be a millionaire to farm now a days. 98 acres of farm land in my area costs over a million dollars. I can imagine it's more in California
This is a dude that knows AI is coming for humanity, and soon
Really? Farming? A man of your talents?
He must've gotten loosey-goosey.
There is great benefits in being a farmer. Generations ago ppl survived jist fine off the land and grew their own food and livestock. There is a certain level of peace to it.
he's just at the end of the software engineer lifecycle lmao
Pretty sure he just retired to become self employed. Big difference in the grand scheme of things.
If he's is raising goose for slaughter then I'm sad. Fuck him. I'm cool if it's a sanctuary
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