Minecraft creator Notch shares the darker side of life after a big exit
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I awoke years later (thankfully only two) to find that I had none of what it would take to be happy, or to grow as a man, and a seeming eternity of free time stretching out before me to enjoy my comfortable isolation.
I only had to taste the false freedom of wealth - really just an appetiser - to know that no amount of resources would fulfil me if I could not meet basic emotional needs, go through pain and challenge, be vulnerable, build relationships, and self-nurture. God forbid I ever come into the kind of money he has - but if I do, I pray I would have the courage to start from scratch to build the life that nourishes my spirit.
I think many will take a high position, point a finger at this man, and feel good about themselves. It's easy to look at him and say "High value problems," and "He has nothing to complain about," or even "He should be X/do Y...", etc. The real tragedy for me is that his issue can be so socially unacceptable.
I rate him for being open and vulnerable about this part of the journey and hope he finds the peace he deserves.
"like three people thanked me for the two million kronor after tax bonus i gave from my own private money. Others said I was cheap."
Per Google, the exchange rate for Swedish Kronor to US Dollars is 0.12, so 2,000,000 Kronor works out to $240,000, which while certainly a nice and possibly even life-changing bonus is hardly enough to retire on in Sweden given the cost of living.
Considering the company sold for more than $2.5 billion and Mojang had so few employees, Notch could have easily made all of them millionaires while still walking away himself a billionaire. In fact, probably the only reason they didn't all end up rich is because Notch never gave any of his employees any equity in the company whatsoever.
Honestly, "cheap" isn't a completely inaccurate description of his conduct here. But it was his company, and now it's his money, and he can do as he pleases with it, but publicly complainig that his former employees aren't especially grateful to him, despite his relative stinginess (no stock options at all?), is silly.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not really a fan and don't have any loyalty either way, it would be good to hear from someone on the inside.
It is so, so much more difficult to make a game successful than to make successful game.
This comment from earlier this week comes to mind (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10132343):
"Most people will negotiate for more salary because they understand that options will just fuck them over. Money won't."
No surprise, I guess people want it both ways. Competitive salary AND lots of options.
However, in general, people feel that you shouldn't take a very large salary cut just for a few options. Most startups are not going to have a significant exit. Some (like Zynga), will manage to find a way of screwing you out of options if they do have a substantial exit. Only a few will have options that have a very large upside.
So, if your options only add up to some very small percentage of the company, they shouldn't be given in lieu of a very large amount of salary. Sure, you're working on something exciting at a startup and there is some potential upside, so maybe take a 10% salary cut and a few options to compensate for it. But don't take a 50% salary cut (or a 100% cut, where you're only paid in options), and look at your options and say "it's worth it because these have a chance of being worth millions."
If you don't want risk, why would you work at a startup? If you aren't betting on a big exit, why wouldn't you just work at a company like Google or Facebook where your total (guaranteed, risk free) compensation would be far greater?
At my last startup I negotiated for a lower salary and as much equity as I could get, and I asked for more equity with every promotion. Those were the best decisions I ever made. I want to work at a startup because I want more risk, not less.
Another part of me is disgusted with the way he resents his former employees. There does seem to be a miser mentality at play here. He deserved his success but would he had gotten there without the right people? I sense absolutely no gratitude. Most of them were most likely required to work at Microsoft for a certain period of time to receive their bonuses.
Not that I care much about this issue, but yes the game was very popular before any company was created.
I know a bunch of fairly well off people and those with prioritized family lives seem to be the ones who are dealing with it the best.
I think a lot of it has to do with the self-perception that as a man with significantly increased wealth, your pool of women who would be interested in you is vastly expanded.
But then you realize that the women aren't interested in 'you' but the wealth itself - which brings a whole different set of problems.
If he doesn't flaunt the cash, he could very easily find someone who likes "him for who he is". Hell, go rent a normal apartment, get a 9-5 job for a while, and "pretend" you aren't rich for a couple of months.
Careful. I'm fairly sure that's actually the technical definition of begging the question. That is, because you assume settling down and having kids is "normal", naturally doing that will, you know, make things "more normal".
In fact, I'll put money down that if he had that house with the white picket fence and 2.5 children and suddenly became a billionaire, odda are most of his problems would still exist. Friends would still be alienated. People would still be jealous. The only difference is he'd have a wife who might (hopefully) support him and a couple dependents to worry about.
OK. Do meaningful things with your kids then. Make art. Volunteer at a food bank. Learn how to grow tomatoes. Build a robot.
There are more options than "fold socks" and "put cover letters on the TPS reports".
Some people just aren't cut out for the family life.
And I share this as someone who has gone through it in the hope that sharing might in some small way assist those that have not gone through it yet.
I'm just wondering if something will prompt us to wake up one day and change our minds, but it certainly hasn't happened yet.
I'm a cynic, and very conscious that it's down to my brain getting flooded with drugs. But they're oh, so very efficient drugs.
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Bill Gates didn't suddenly become a philanthropist after all his money, he married a woman who did care deeply about things enough to change her husband's direction.
Steve Jobs gained and lost enormous money but remained passionate about making better products no matter what. You might not like him but he remained the same throughout other than maybe getting a little more trusting and less crazy.
Despite this, how many will choose fast food tonight?
Fast food, sit-coms on TV, no exercise, same boring commute every day, same conversations with the same people every day. All of these things are well within our control. Do we lack imagination, or something else? Even without his fortune, we can all share in his misfortune ;-)
P.S. My boss once told me about someone who would buy anyone a hamburger in exchange for a good story. Not really, that expensive IMHO (cheaper than a movie!).
So for Notch, I hope this is just a cherry picked selection of tweets to make a point, because if that is how he is truly feeling most of the time, he needs therapy.... or maybe just a hobby.
That's what you have to understand when you're reading these tweets: this is not a normal individual that understands typical human behavior. He has always had trouble connecting to people, and no surprise, money doesn't fix that. Remove everything else, he'd be an awesome guy to hang out with and talk about video games, but he wouldn't really know how to have a conversation around the typical personalities of this forum, since he isn't an entrepreneur by nature. For most of us, all we ever really talk about when meeting other people are: 1) Our own businesses; 2) Their businesses; 3) How we/they/everyone should start a business -- we get absolutely pumped about these topics. That's how this guy is with video games, and it makes it difficult to connect to the people who he's supposed to hang out with due to the social standing his money has given him. Why? Because the people who have made that much money almost always come from the entrepreneurial mindset, since a business is what usually took them there (or a business on top of their fame).
So, I hope Notch will somehow develop an understanding of the world that allows him to become immune to what others think he ought to be and what he ought to do, and instead he just becomes like Wozniak and becomes content with himself. It definitely won't happen if he continues to use social media as an outlet, instead of making real human connections that aren't focused on partying and spending his money. I don't imagine him getting there, though, since it seems like he isn't growing the fortitude required to handle the responsibility of the wealth he's developed. It's always painful for me to see people unable or unwilling to help themselves, and in that regard this shows that a billionaire can be in the same emotional place as a person living on the street.
[1] http://www.inquisitr.com/1589883/minecraft-officially-owned-...
I don't care for Twitter and would have no way of reading this story otherwise.
Well, my snark side, these twittericles are getting a bit old.
I do hope notch bounces back, everyone has their ups and downs, and it's really hard to judge what's actually going on from an outside context, especially through a medium as scattered as Twitter.
The transition period between completion of a long time project and the beginning of your next will leave everyone vulnerable.
Once he finds the purpose and focus, all these would not matter.
With a large amount of money one can focus fully on what one really wants to achieve in life, you can "buy time" by hiring others to work with you, you can "buy life" by setting yourself up in a very low stress environment with quality food and help with your physical needs.
It doesn't take much to figure out that a life spent partying is empty and unfulfilling, the difference between not having a lot of money and having it is that after figuring this out in one case one has to go back to their job, while in the other one can step back and work on something meaningful (to them) without concerning themselves about how to make rent or buy food while they do so.
Maybe though having a big exit / lots of money is easier if one is tendentially an introvert, for me when I read things like "how do I know if all these people around me want to be friends with me or my money" the first thing I think of is "why would I want a lot of people around me, it would just take time away from working towards my goals"
Also unless somebody is a Hollywood star it should be feasible to be anonymous enough to meet people and get to know them without them realizing you are worth gobs of money, just get a modest house somewhere not under your own name and volunteer at some local charities for a while, which is a lot more fulfilling than the party circuit anyways.
This said good luck to Notch and others in his situation in figuring things out, the more people we have working towards making the world a better place, the better it is for everybody.
Theoretically Notch could bring himself out of the stratosphere by removing enough money from his account that he can be perceptibly normal. e.g. donate most of his fortune and leaving himself only enough to qualify as 'FU money'
Even at my meager $70k income, I've gotten some sense that after a certain point, money's not going to greatly increase my quality of life. And if I had billions, I wouldn't give the money all away either, but at least I wouldn't complain about what a burden it was, living in my $70 million Beverly Hills mansion. That empathy has to go both ways, and those words are really grating to the truly less fortunate in life who can't even put food on the table reliably.
I don't really know if I would be any happier with 17 bathrooms and a home cinema with seating for 30 people. Especially not if you're constantly second guessing your friends' motives when they come over to watch movies.
Yeah, I think I'd probably settle for a $4 million house in a great location. You know, nothing too fancy. Oh, and a jacuzzi way up high with a view of the mountains and the ocean.
Oh, certainly. That's possible, and one is allowed to complain. It's just that it's in bad taste to frame it that way. It'd be like going up to a person in a wheelchair and saying, "man, it sure is exhausting having to walk everywhere! You really aren't missing anything, I'm telling you."
It seemed like he was genuinely happy creating games. Why can't he go back to that rather than being a celebrity? I could imagine him fading from the spotlight and becoming a private person within a couple of years.
I'd guess there's a much deeper issue at play. Crippling social anxiety, an overly extreme need to be liked, etc. Then combined with his semi-fame, he's finding it difficult to create again, out of fear of rejection / mockery / jerks. The solution is to stop caring so much about what other people think (it's how people like John Carmack survive it), getting to that point appears to be his challenge.
It's saddening and quite moving.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCeeTfsm8bk
I think both Notch's feelings of isolation and ennui and the resentment of those around him are both valid. One doesn't preclude the other , in fact they feed into each other.
You give it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Within reason you could pick a specific project that interests you (education in Sweden, or a specific disease, or clean water in Africa), and they would go after it on your money's behalf. They have the scale and systems in place to do that with large donations.
Sure, you have money to do whatever you want, but, those friends you have? You sure they are your friends, and not the friends of your wallet?
Those people you trust, you sure you still trust them not to make a quick buck from selling stories about you?
Want to head out while looking like crap? Sure you want those photos posted all over the media with the accompanying headlines about how you have let yourself go?
There is a saying about how the best way to enjoy a sunrise is by sharing it with someone....no amount of money can make that happen.
Meh.
Apparently the appeal faded, and now he's decided, hey, why not act like a zillionaire? And he's discovered that it makes him miserable, but it hasn't yet occurred to him that he doesn't have to act like a zillionaire.
Fortunately we have empathetic commenters here as well.
[0] https://medium.com/@colunchers/quotable-tweetstorms-87770df8...
And I assume that's what he's trying to do, is find a mature way to spend his money. In a way that makes the world better.
I thought that was bshimmin's point. Notch thought that Microsoft money would make him happy, and he hasn't yet figured out how to deal with the fact that it doesn't.
I don't think for a second he needed more money than he already had, or that he thought this would make him happier. And he and ez broke up even before he sold Minecraft anyway, he was never really happy.
> bshimmin's point
I thought he was being a little mean about it. Just my opinion.
In my defence, the tweet about the "great girl" who was afraid of his lifestyle rather annoyed me, but I do understand that money doesn't make for happiness - often quite the opposite - and that it can be hard to form new and trusting relationships when you have a lot in the bank.
Just like a car going at 60mph isn't breaking any speed records - but a human would.
It's all relative :)
So yes, fuck notch and his inability to maximise his personal utility.
Good to know.
If something is that easy to solve, it's not a problem.
In this instance, his problem was something like the inability to predict Ibiza's utility. He probably doesn't know himself well enough.
Some people have the isolation, and then have no choice but to endure it constantly, unable to change their circumstances. Suffering in quite desperation.
Notch wasn't isolated. He just picked the wrong destination in a large array of destinations.
That guy build a folder tree in the filesystem because of "performance", which means he put a trie on a b-tree because he didn't know about the latter.
Also so much for "I'm going to open source this, once I'm rich and famous".
From my perspective, this comment broadly captures what is so tragic for me about his situation and the potential pitfalls of isolation-by-riches: the apparent fact that the majority of people discount a wealthy man's cry for help (read "willingness to be vulnerable"), dehumanising him and robbing him of an opportunity to heal - whether through therapy, community, or some other significant life change.
A wealthy person is still a person, but when another looks at their burden and finds it lighter than their own, they often don't pity them because they perceive they can much more easily mobilize their own help (see: an article about a billionaire's emotional state vs European immigration crisis.)
Basically, the "pitfall" of isolation by riches is a problem a large portion of humans would like to have.
If you're having trouble carrying a light weight, sure, get help. It just seems pretty childish to complain to an open microphone about a something so petty. I have no doubt these emotions are very tough for Notch, and I see that I would probably have the same problems in his situation.
But seriously, this isn't the kind of thing you say to a wide audience without being completely out of touch. He should know better.
Yeah, and as someone who makes enough money to not worry about not being on the streets, but also not enough to be able to just do anything I want, my burden is light relative to people in 3rd world countries.
No matter what you say, someone's burden is light compared to another, and completely denying someone like Notch the right to be able to get their burden off their chest, just because their's is less than yours, is asinine.
Same principle applies here...
A few that come to mind, that I've noticed with wealthy friends:
1. Time. You'll probably have plenty. You're free. What do you do all day when your old friends are working? That probably means making new friends. But it can also lead to disconnects with old friends. Most people don't understand.
2. Ulterior motives of people. Imagine you meet a person - any person. Most relatively wealthy people will assume this person wants something from them. Guess what, people DO usually want something from them. This can lead to problems bonding and/or having relationships.
3. Investing and taxes: what if I invest badly and lose all my capital? Ok, so you invest in a property in Spain and a few years later sell it. You pay $x tax. For some silly reason the authorities don't agree, and want to levy additional tax x2. On top of that, your tax lawyer isn't great, and you need to go find a new one. It'll drag on for years, going through the courts.
etc etc
Many people would say, cry me a river. Obviously it's better to be wealthy than to be poor, but it's not all it's made out to be. No therapist is going to fix that.
Problems are problems, and I personally respect that everyone has their own set of issues in life. Wealth can be a burden.
Or buy a nightclub like Jamie Zawinski, or travel the world taking photos like Tom Anderson.
Problem 1: Use your new-found time to work on projects. These could be new companies that grow your wealth, endeavours that seek to create a change that you care about, or doing things to help people that you care about. There are other alternatives, too. Joining investment groups. Taking holidays. Consulting.
Problem 2: For chance meetings, I can see how this is a problem, but if you primarily meet new people through existing social circles, that might mitigate this effect a bit. I don't have this problem, but I have noticed that I've made lots of great friends through existing friends.
Problem 3: Could you not hire someone (or a company) to manage this sort of thing? I realize plenty of oversight would still be prudent, but it should alleviate the stress of it somewhat. Diversity in investments should mitigate the risk of losing everything. Limiting investments to areas that are well understood might also be a good idea for avoiding tax surprises.
I agree that wealthy people will definitely still have life problems, but I'm still not convinced it has to be these ones. Forms of social isolation (eg. imbalance that notch mentioned) seem much more plausible and nowhere near as easily remedied.
Naive might be a strong word for it, but it's always easy to say someone else's problems are good problems to have, or they have it easier, but as long as we're putting them on a spectrum and assigning value to their experience, we're not accounting for the struggle itself. It's not the value of the struggle that matters, it's that we all have struggles, and being able to find support for when we are struggling makes a HUGE quality of life difference.
So many people in today's world want to deny others this experience, "you don't/didn't have it that hard, what are you complaining about. Man Up. Stop being a pussy... You're rich, what's the problem..." etc
He doesn't have it hard, he's just not creative enough to enjoy his new life. I guess it's unfortunate he feels so awful, but if he can't find something fun and fulfilling to do while sitting on a pile of money, he has absolutely no right to complain-- an entire world is sitting out there, waiting for him to engage with.
Molehills become mountains, and, once conquered, the next steppe of the molehill becomes another mountain.
And when you climb an actual mountain, and look down from the top? You're bored, because now you can't spend your time climbing.
In this iteration, the rich complain that their former problems have been solved, but have been replaced by other problems as a result of solving those initial problems. It is a fallacy to assume that these new problems are of the same magnitude of the other problems, and they really should not be treated with the same set of thoughts. The problems of emotional awkwardness with newfound vast wealth are not the same magnitude as the problems of building a company, and those are not the same magnitude as overcoming past emotional abuse, or struggling to feed your family, or trying to avert emergently approaching death. See how I've captured several logs of magnitude here?
The conflation of magnitude is what causes the negative reactions when rich people complain. They are complaining about things at the very top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. These are philosophical (academic/only relevant under very narrow circumstances) problems that are in all likelihood completely unsolvable by complaining to others. These are the kinds of problems that are solvable with critical introspection, discussion with close others, and discussion with professionals. You get no points for throwing yourself onto the pyre and wailing to the world-- there is tumblr for that, and it isn't a realistic shot at solving the problems.
Anyways, a more direct response to your points:
1. I've been in this situation, and just ended it recently. There were no disconnects with old friends... I think you'd have to have shitty friends for this to be a problem.
2. Everyone already has ulterior motives and purposes for each other. Sometimes all you want from the other person is friendship, and if it's a mutual feeling, it's great. This is human nature-- everyone does want something from everyone else. The more you have, the more they want.
3. I'm not sure if this is a serious statement. This isn't a problem on most people's radars, and is really irrelevant because you mention that these people can pay others to deal with these problems for them. If the money is stressing you out, just ditch it... oh wait, you like it too much. Clam up and make do, or talk to a therapist-- one of the few people who will take this line of thought seriously.
4. Of course wealthy people can be miserable and wealth can be a burden, but the beauty of wealth is that you have far more resources to help you carry burdens. This means that when the wealth complain about their burden, the rest of us snort derisively-- it's as though they have forgotten that the weight on everyone else is heavier and more unwieldy.
These challenges may even be aggravated by the isolation of wealth if you don't already have the basic structure of a happy life - things like loving relationships, stable/happy emotional makeup, work you find meaningful, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy to reduce someone's isolation of wealth by taking a good chunk of it off their hands. But I'd be foolish to trade my family, faith, or health for it - much less all of the above.
It's a good reminder to keep our priorities straight.
Nope. It does mean that you lose the right to complain though.
Yeah, let's isolate rich persons even more instead of helping them to find their way together with us.
That's for sure will lead to a better world where rich can connect with others and share their fortunes for a common good.
/s
I don't really have any sympathy.
Plus, his former staff who he sold out needs to reach out to him to apologize? "So fuck all of you. Fuck you so hard."
I lost a lot of respect for that man.
As it stands, he just comes across as somebody wiping tears with a 100 dollar bill.
Please don't post spiteful swipes here.