alt Hacker News>They also have bills to pay, families to take care of and many other obligations
I honestly don't get your point. I also have bills to pay and a family to take care of. Almost everyone does. I can't just quit my job and spend my life sunbathing on a sunny island, even though that sounds way better than my office job.
The number of people who have so much that they don't ever need to worry about bills or affording a family is tiny, even among HN users. This is also not what "designing your life" is about.
To be clear, I acknowledge my privilege - I have a relatively high salary (but not US-high, not even 6 USD figures) and don't need to worry about day-to-day survival. I just fundamentally disagree that there is some threshold below which people can't make decisions about their own life or career.
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> I just fundamentally disagree that there is some threshold below which people can't make decisions about their own life or career.
Stuff happens to you and to one's family that you just cannot "strategize" your life around just like that, unless you have (some, a good amount even) money, this is just how things are. If you haven't ever been in that place consider yourself very lucky.
I'm going to add my perspective here, I'm new to the website and have noticed people here might not fully understand not having any opportunity and what that is like. My mother, father, and grandparents all died before I was 19. I was homeless for a bit, and slept behind bushes while working at a local Kmart. I would have stayed homeless if not for some friends (that I barely knew then) inviting me to rent an apartment with them (they did not know about my situation).
The one thing I had going for me was that my grandmother prepaid my college tuition. So I scraped by working bullshit jobs, completed college, and now in my 30s I'm doing sort-of okay as a programmer for a start up (the pay here is bad, which is why I'm here).
It was awful getting here and I was always one small step away from being permanently homeless or dead. Maybe he didn't mean it like this, but a "normal" person means a person living in poverty in China or Indian or wherever else, and they all have it even worse than me.
I'm writing this here because, not you, but others on this website tend to just give some form of "bro, just stop sucking so bad if you want to improve your life" and it doesn't seem like they really understand what having no option is like.