34M, $3.7M, 11 years in FAANG, Crazy to Leave 550k/yr job for Sabbatical?
I made a post in /Fire here with a lot more details:
Will just include summary, and ask this smaller community, how crazy is it to get off this gravy train? EE/ME working in FAANG for 11 years:
Summary of financials:
| Year | Gross Income | Net Income | Expenses | Savings Rate | Networth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $132,000 | $88,000 | $35,000 | 60% | $57,000 |
| 2016 | $189,000 | $127,000 | $65,000 | 49% | $134,000 |
| 2017 | $188,000 | $126,000 | $65,000 | 48% | $212,000 |
| 2018 | $248,000 | $163,000 | $65,000 | 60% | $345,000 |
| 2019 | $326,000 | $206,000 | $65,000 | 68% | $576,000 |
| 2020 | $443,500 | $263,500 | $50,700 | 81% | $1,080,000 |
| 2021 | $519,500 | $304,500 | $70,800 | 77% | $1,710,000 |
| 2022 | $520,500 | $305,500 | $143,000 | 53% | $1,490,000 |
| 2023 | $602,500 | $352,500 | $136,000 | 61% | $2,280,000 |
| 2024 | $613,000 | $363,000 | $146,000 | 60% | $3,143,000 |
| 2025 | $590,000 | $320,000 | $127,000 | 60% | $3,855,000 |
| Total: | $4,372,000 | $2,619,000 | $968,500 | 63% |
Overall, have been doing the same thing for a long time, and has been an absolute grind, feeling the burnout. Have wanted to take a break for a long time, but have held off to pull in this income as long as I could, but think I've hit breaking point, partly because NW has grown so much.
Challenges: Pressure and Responsibility about to ramp up significantly over next few months. Org and management changes that have been difficult, culture changing to be a lot less enjoyable. Unclear if I will be able to deliver, possible may get pushed out, especially as I'm finding it more difficult to focus and deliver. Also, income will settle to 450-500k over next year, still very high, but no longer climbing.
Plan: Hit $4m and take off 6-18 months, NW can support current spending while I reset and spend time on passion projects and personal bucket list items, especially while I am young, have energy, and pre-kids. At some point come back to tech for another few year stint (who knows, may find something I'm more interested in), shooting for 60-80+% of income, but letting capital do work to drive to ultimate NW goal of $6-8m, or find a more interesting lower paying job I'm willing to stick at longer
Pros of quitting:
- Time to spend on personal projects, bucket list items and travel I am unable to do with full time job
- Trial run of FIRE (do I even enjoy long unstructured time?), after day dreaming about for so long
- Mental space to find new interests, hobbies, and think about next career step
- Have this time entirely to myself, before family/kids define priorities, and it would be irresponsible to make a decision like this
Dangers of quitting:
- Give up very high earnings with on set path
- As mentioned, worried if I can even pull this off another 5 or even 2 years even if I wanted, may burn professional reputation as well by not performing
- Concretely push back my NW trajectory, or full FIRE timeline.
- If I'm able to return in 1-2 years, and make ~60% of income to cover expenses + a little, FIRE may be another 6-9 years of working
- If I'm not able to or don't want to get back into tech, may not be a path here to FIRE in bay area
- Large disruption going on in industry with AI, large lay-offs, will this be a one way door to quit
- Huge market correction while not earning and withdrawing
- While NW hit could be large, I still think NW would stay fairly substantial...
Posted Apr 9, 2026, 9:22 PM UTC