Summary and main question
Having worked in development for 7 years, reached what I believe to my ceiling, and being unhappy about having too many managerial responsibilities, I am looking to retire early from this line of career.
What should I do once I start living off passive income?
- Start a career in a new space?
- Volunteer?
- Start a new organization?
Background and the plan
I am very privileged person, and around the age of 20, decided to orient my career towards doing the most good I can - not in a probabilistic, NPV kind of way, but based on social and economic development I can see and measure. This led me to set two 5 year plans for my career - the first aimed at acquiring skills in the private sector and building a good resume, then moving over to a social business; the second, to climb the ranks and grow my impact through managerial leverage. I will be reaching the end of the second 5 year plan and another key personal milestone by August 2026.
The results and the problem
My current position is that of an executive managing an organization of 1,000+ employees which delivers $50M a year in measurable impact, growing 20-25% a year.
While not all this impact is attributable to me, I believe this is the most impactful role I may have in my whole life. However, due to my personality type (compassionate, but not empathetic; pragmatic altruist, but not into people directly), I am growing exhausted from managing an organization (people, ugh). I enjoy about 30-40% of my work (strategy, new projects, improving systems) but dislike the rest (hiring, developing, promoting, off-boarding, reallocating people, building alignment, etc.).
One reason why I am growing tired is that I fundamentally do not provide individual contributions anymore. I find myself very excited at the idea of coding a Python script, learning data science, tinkering electronics, and other nerdy things.
Personal situation and opportunity
I was both blessed and cursed by my family situation. By age 25, both my parents and all my grandparents had passed away - leaving my sisters to be my only direct family, but also setting me free and leaving me inheritances worth around $250-300K.
On top of this, I was financially savvy to save and invest, growing my net worth to currently $700K at age 31. Note that I donated very little of all this. At this rate, given my living expenses, I expect to reach my early retirement goal by Jan 1st, 2026 - meaning that I should be able to completely retire and live off passive income from these savings from age 32 until age 85-90. This is factoring in my family choices (married and in a childfree relationship).
This gives me the option to choose what to do with my free time.
Options
I have some ideas, but want to avoid motivated reasoning biases by getting third party opinions early on on what is the most impactful way forward.
Some options considered include:
- Staying in my role or org - or do a lateral switch to a similar org - grow my managerial leverage even further
- There is a material risk that I reach a ceiling where I cannot grow my impact anymore
- I also risk burning out and completely losing my passion for impact, being jaded, etc.
- Career reset - get started in a more sustainable career path, starting at the entry level / individual contributor. Sub options:
- Earning to give eg. data scientist in tech start ups.
- Stay in economic development eg. monitoring and evaluation.
- Volunteering - using my skills to amplify others' impact.
- Starting or joining a new organization - using my skills and some of my stash to start or join an impactful organization
- This could eventually lead me to the same place that I am now, ie. becoming an exec and missing individual contributions.
- Which path is likely to be the most impactful?
- What else do you see?
Please critique my train of thoughts ! I welcome any and all external opinions.
Thanks for recommending Successif! Our homepage might be a better starting point as it has more information on our focus on helping people reduce AI risk. That being said, the profile of the OP fits our program very well, and we would be glad to get an application.