I quit my high paying tech job at Meta after having panic attacks

So this article is one of those pyramid scheme articles. Where they essentially say "quit your job, and just speculate on the housing market instead".

What they don't tell you is that you are buying from the people who commissioned this article.

> So we started with house hacking, a lower-cost way of getting into real estate. We planned to buy a house, live in a part of it, and rent out the rest of the home to someone else.

> We bought a five-bedroom home in Redding, California, four hours north of San Francisco. While we lived in a 252-square-foot detached guest house in the backyard, our main house was bringing in about $8,000 a month in revenue on Airbnb.

> We were basically living for free and getting paid money every month. We grew confident in real estate and saw its potential. I even set a personal goal to quit Meta once I was making $10,000 a month from real estate.

> We doubled down and bought two more properties in 2021, and by the end of that year, I reached that $10,000-a-month milestone. I then bought two more homes in 2022 and one more in 2023.

Literally an advertisement for AirBNB

Of course, if you can do it, it's a good option. But according to what I hear around me, you are just as likely going to be feed for the experienced sharks as maintenance costs and bad tenant choices eat you up.

>> I know it sounds crazy to leave a $370,000 job, and staying at Meta for the rest of my life would have ensured financial security, but I knew it wasn't right for me.

We all have a price on life. The problem, and why I don't see this situation as being extraordinary (although I'm happy they found a better path), are the people who need positive change, yet don't have the financial resources to get there. This person did. I know many that don't.

>> I then bought two more homes in 2022 and one more in 2023. >> I'm still exploring right now, but I know my purpose will be to build community and help others change their lives meaningfully, the same way I've changed mine.

I don't think flipping houses helps out less fortunate people, if that is the author's goal. It drives the cost of housing up. Less wealthy people get in at the entry level of good neighborhoods by buying the houses that need repair, and do the repairs themselves. When wealthy people do this, they take away opportunity from someone else. To be clear, this is not "wrong" or "bad", it's business.

> One night, we brainstormed every possible way to generate income on a whiteboard — drop shipping, brand affiliate marketing, and real estate.

What a douchebag.

I'll take "Dickensian Workplace Stories" for $370k, Alex:

> My typical day started at 7 a.m. I worked until noon, had lunch and a couple of meetings, and then dove back into intense coding blocks from 2:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.

> Even after work hours, I couldn't turn work off — I kept thinking about the problems at work and what I needed to do. I think the pressure and the environment of working in tech made it incredibly hard for me to disconnect after work.

> For six months, from March to September 2020, I was at the lowest point in my life. Every day felt like a grind: I didn't know what I was doing or why I was still working. My performance started dropping — I couldn't focus on my code or keep up with the deadlines.

> In my opinion, there's a constructive way to give feedback: "Hey, I like the attempt you made here, and there might be opportunities to improve in this way." But some engineers at Meta lacked tact and nuance: "This is really bad. You shouldn't have written it like this." This kind of feedback makes it sound like this is a black-and-white issue, and it often overlooks the emotional aspect of communication.

> I remember one month, I was the only engineer on the Android team because people were either on vacation or taking mental-health leave. I didn't want my team to be held back because of me, so I felt pressured to perform. If I didn't stay up to speed and get those learnings quickly, then I'd be delaying future work streams, which would impact the whole team's progress.

> It was frustrating that leadership was looking so closely at commit counts to gauge employee success. I believed that code quantity alone didn't prove anything — skills like mentorship, project management, and navigating interpersonal dependencies should also be valued. But my manager held a different perspective, and that conversation was one of the last straws that convinced me to leave Meta.

What is...a job?

Every single time I read one of these it always ends up with some "and that's why you just need to buy real estate". It's practically a cottage industry writing these articles.

Terrifying article.

I mean, panic attacks suck, but per this article the OP bought 5 properties within 3 years and quit his day job. I don’t know how much leverage is involved but if the RE sector turns south and there’s no six figure job to backstop those housing payments, this story does not have a happy ending.

Too much risk for my personal apetite, anyways.

To me, this article sort of sums up why many tech workers and house flippers are viewed in such a negative light.

Maybe my perception is biased as this individual worked at Meta but don't really understand the infatuation with "Build community!" - AirBnB, being a landlord, and flipping homes aren't a sustainable path to doing so in my opinion.

Imagine the feeling of being underwater on 3 houses, especially if your physiology is prone to panic attacks.

If only these people would build new real estate