How quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up | Hacker News Reader

How quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up

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151 pointsawjr85 comments

"One day, I even found myself asking my girlfriend for a few cents because I had no money to buy bottled water"

In general, when you have no money, tap water is better than bankruptcy.

Came here to say the same thing. This whole article could be summarized as "I was pampered growing up. I was pampered through school. I was so pampered I had no concept of what things actually cost because everything was paid for me."

It's quite a shock when you start noticing that $3 bottles of water start adding up.

Unless you are in a country without potable water (like China where a bottle of water really is just 24 cents), then by all means, that bottle of water is a good investment.

Or if you live in Flint, Michigan or any other number of places in the US that don't have potable water.

I highly doubt the poster lives in Flint.

You could live like locals and just boil the water. It doesn't get rid of everything in there, but it's better than drinking straight from the tap. I run mine through a Brita filter first. I know that the Brita doesn't actually do much, but it tastes much better at least.

Depends where you live. I have fine tapwater and drink it, but if I was even 1% worried - I would pony up for the 5 gallon jugs of bottled water. Life is too short to save $10 a month and die of cancer.

Except my friends tell me that the big water dispenser jug services are actually not trustworthy. Heck, this is a country that is currently experiencing a big vaccine safety scandal that's hard to imagine happening in many other countries. Then again, I wouldn't have imagined Flint's water problem to be as bad as it is, but something similar once happened in Canada too in a small town that found e.coli in their water. BTW, if it's not clear, my comments are regarding China.

Ya, avoid the big water dispensers. We just buy boxes of bottled water now.

exactly! bottled water is a good that is well-known to be over-priced

Over priced and 100% unnecessary, unless you live in Flint

I'm sure even bottled water isn't prone to pollution, but more and more alarms are raised about medical pollution in tap water. So I'm still happier when I drink out of a bottle.

you might be happier, but that's just your emotions playing with you, no rationality. I see it all the times with colleagues - they have amazing tap water coming straight from Alps (it really tastes well) and 2 metres next to it vending machine with 2 euro per 0.5l plastic bottle. Well guess what they do every single effin' time...

most of bottled water is tap water in plastic bottles, potentially infused with mix of BPA and other if ever exposed to slight amount of sunlight. don't ever think they use some high quality inert plastics on that bottle, because they don't.

with true deep well/mountain spring you are getting potentially better quality prior to bottling, and no idea what in final bottle.

if you have really poor quality tap water where you live, that's your best choice. it still might not be a healthy choice though.

My city's water comes from deep aquifers. In theory it is high quality, but in practice it tastes horrible because it is so hard.

My city just kicked off a project to deepen the wells so they don't need as much anti-bacterial treatment and the savings will be used to soften it a bit.

I once went to the town of Evian and saw people ordering bottles of Volvic in the restaurants...

That is 100% untrue, even the flint water could be treated to be potable.

In your home? If you knew the water was that contaminated would you trust your home water treatment equipment to remove everything? In that situation I think I'd buy bottled water until things are resolved.

Distilling water with an activated carbon filter does remove everything.

Sure, how much does that system cost and does it actually taste good to drink? I've heard distilled water tastes horrible.

if you remove everything from the water with this method, or any other method, there is systems to re-mineralize water... (Reverse osmosis would also remove most of the lead)

Plus there's nothing wrong with buying a washable travel mug and just filling it with tap water.

Not if you are in Thailand or some other strange country. Camping water filter, or UV purifier is the cheapest option in that case.

You get used to the local water, it's safe in most any urban area in SEA.

Refrigerated bottled water is cheap though, only 12 cents, but I know many locals who perceive drinking out of plastic bottles to be a bigger health risk than drinking tap water.

Yes - I found it reading like he hadn't hit rock bottom for the VH1 Behind the Music story to be complete. :-) "But look at me from my great new life in Thailand." Umm... ok - I guess your life didn't really end then.

So a guy working as a highly paid consultant that does not have time to spend any of his money runs out of it in less than a year... And his top "warning" for the whole thing is social pressure. Is this a joke?

I would imagine that once you're into a certain lifestyle (i.e. not leading a student life anymore) you have very high monthly expenses and lifestyle choices that are not that easy to get rid off.

Yeah but if you go the startup route and you don't take that into consideration, you are probably going to fail. You have to sacrifice.

Not justifying it, but I guess that's what happened there.

And it is indeed something, that he points out.

You'd think, "if your salary goes from $250k to $20k, start living like you make $20k" wouldn't really need to be communicated out like some sort of secret.

I promise you, they don't teach you that in business school

"There's 2 things they don't teach you at Harvard. How to handle failure, and how to handle a shotgun. I'm about to do both" - the dude from the Simpsons movie

Consultants are rarely entrepreneurs, he would have been smarter hiring 1-3 people to build his startup idea, then quit his job. People with startups have this fascination they can do it all themselves, it rarely works.

So he wrote this from a beach in Thailand while sipping a fancy drink? He no longer works at a job he hates. He went on a two year journey attempting to self actualize - but discovered his actual self is a bit of a failure?*

How has his life been fucked up?

What's the word (some sort of portmanteau of entrepreneur & porn) which we use to describe this Tim Ferriss style trash?

*that last point is a bit harsh, trying to be sarcastic/funny there, not mean

Entrepornography?

Maybe it's consulting outside the U.S. (guy was a Senior Associate at Bain for 1 year), but the consulting intro doesn't ring true. Both personal experience and an extensive network into MBB: I don't know anyone at that (junior) level who a) is flying trans-Atlantic on a weekly basis (to the U.S. no less), b) doesn't know where they're going until last minute, and c) changes projects every week.

It doesn't happen. This isn't House of Lies.

Guy appears to be a professional blogger now, so this is very much a grain-of-salt perspective.

He's not necessarily lying - I have several MBB friends (engagement manager level) who have been flying trans-Atlantic nearly weekly from the US for the better part of the last 3 years. Hell, I still fly coast to coast on a regular basis myself.

MBB-level consulting has changed a lot in the last few years. Clients are no longer willing to pay their rates for full projects, so a lot of their projects are now 2-3 week due diligence projects to validate the output that some internal team or a Big 4 accounting firm's consulting division put together. One friend of mine has worked at McKinsey for 4 years and has yet to work on a project longer than 6 weeks the entire time (most of her projects are 2-4 weeks).

Even then, it's basically just the "MBB tax" you have to pay to whatever consulting company your board of directors used to work at. These projects could probably be done remotely, but those firms calling card is to massively over-deliver every project they get in order to justify their rates.

All of this leads to a situation where projects are shorter, less valuable, and happen with less lead time than they used to. The pipelines have been getting shallower every year - look at how MBB are all trying to branch out into operations consulting with mixed results.

One thing to keep in mind is that while MBB tend to exude this aura of invincibility, they're actually struggling right now. I wouldn't be surprised to see some consolidation happen in this space soon.

I thought the point of having SF, LA, NYC offices was to cut down on travel time, to the benefit of both the consultants and the client.

There is a high element of bullshit social control in situations like this.

You could probably hire a few people in (say) Eastern Europe and set them up with great process, tooling, and telecon and beat the hell out of consulting groups that run their consultants ragged, but running them ragged is a mechanism of control. You are so committed to it you are not going to question any assumptions.

It is like the way that if you want to succeed in certain professions you pretty much need to move -- it satisfies the ideological idea that "we are hiring the best people from all over the world" and it separates you from friends and family and once more makes it almost impossible you will question the unspoken assumptions your career is based on.

Yeah, I guess my perspective is different since I'm younger, and I'm drawing upon what my friends do/did as MBB interns (or bulge bracket/boutique finance).

One thing that stood out is that a good number of them this summer are paying absurd amounts for housing, usually less than a 5 minute walk to the office. But their logic isn't 'the less time I spend commuting the more time I can have to myself,' it's 'the less time I spend commuting the more likely I will be the first to respond when an MD needs me.'

> but running them ragged is a mechanism of control.

This is actually wrong. I used to think that, but again, the world has changed. Running your team ragged is purely a dog and pony show to win follow-up work. When you go into a client you don't know at all, and you do 6 weeks of work and develop a business strategy... the only way that works is if you walked in with a strategy. Which you always do.

You then proceed to run your team ragged over the next 6 weeks to produce mountains of work and show the executive team at the client "Hey, look at our guys and how hard they work!" The work itself is usually just 120 slides full of busy work with so many assumptions baked in it's all but meaningless, but you make a great first impression and cemented your company's brand perception at the executive level of that client. You can then sell much lower-quality follow-on work for years on the strength of that one 6 week project.

In consulting (ESPECIALLY strategy consulting) politics, perception and packaging are far, far more important than the quality of the output.

Therefore, running your people ragged isn't about control or producing quality output. It's about impressing the client by working your ass off, and establishing a brand perception that hopefully will extend down to the other types of work your company does (which may or may not be of very high quality).

Anyway, I firmly believe that most strategy consulting work in 2016 is really just pipeline development for operations consulting. Important for sure, but not really what most strategy consultants signed up for.

At the EM+ level, from the U.S., and "nearly weekly" (2, 4, 6 weeks)... I buy all of that. Maybe his "text message" story happened once, or is hyperbole, but it isn't the status quo (and wasn't in 2012 when he was at Bain).

You're dead right, though, and I don't discount the level of burn-out and despondency he felt in that line of work.

I am a principal technical consultant. I don't know where I'm flying until the last minute. I can change projects every week, and fly trans-atlantic regularly.

It does happen, and it isn't House of Lies.

You also sound more senior than this guy. I, too, know people with that kind of lifestyle, but they tend to be a) deep specialists and/or b) much more senior.

Not saying it didn't happen to him, or it doesn't happen to anyone. But every week, trans-Atlantic, to the U.S., as an associate... I remain skeptical.

I remember reading this a while ago and feeling completely duped. The author's definition of a 'fcked up life' is what I would love my life to be, assuming I would have an idea to devote myself too, and would be in an environment where that wouldn't seem strange.

What is fcked up it the situation when you're doing it backwards: instead of jumping into a business, and dealing with those problems, you start believing that the normality of your life is what's holding you down, so you artificially create those problems, without having a decent reason for doing so...

I wonder if all the upvotes are due the content, or my accidental use of italic formatting...

In case of the former, would anyone care to elaborate? Do you solely agree with the message, or do you find yourself in a similar situation as described?

Everything looks more _important_ with formatting. Maybe you should become a consultant. ;-)

I'm way ahead of you :)

The title is incredibly annoying. Leaving your corporate job for your dream has a very high chance of fucking up your life for a myriad of very obvious reasons.

Not only that, but the idea that following your dream by creating a startup would provide you with more free-time is beyond basic logic.

This appears to be a thinly veiled marketing exercise.

I work as an independent consultant as my "startup". I had been consulting for about 5 years for other people and saw less and less value in letting the consulting company take 65% of the money they charge for me. I made a good salary, but I never took health benefits, though I did use 401k matching. Anyway, it took a while, but I made the correct contacts and was able to sign MSAs with the 2 major software vendors I do work for, and now can land my own work. I now bill for about 85% of what the other companies charged for me, and even after paying both sides of the employment taxes I have come out way ahead. I found an 18 month project that was planned so that nobody would work > 40 hours a week and have a 7-4 work schedule. There is a possibility of travel, but I will increase my rate for those gigs to make up for the "hardship".

I dont know that I could really call my business a startup, but I do think that if you are working your ass off as a consultant and have a legitimate skill set and the right contacts, you can make your life better. It sounds like this guy just traded one sweatshop for another of his own making.

I took a fairly similar path for a couple years and honestly felt it was pretty much the best of all worlds (corporate/consulting/startup). The only hiccup was growth...I found myself taking on and wanting to do more and it slowly became more than I could handle myself or through the part time online services available at this point in time. People under appreciate their value as an independent consultant so often I am really surprised.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this article. Especially the end quote where he is sort of suggesting going this "dangerous" route, but sort of not.

> No matter how much your journey f*cks up your life or how difficult it will be, enjoy the ride and keep following your passion. As Tony Gaskin puts it perfectly: “If you don’t build your dream, someone will hire you to help build theirs.”

Posts like these are the new infomercial.

I've been working at a consulting firm for almost six years. Tons of people quit to make their own startups or go into another industry. For me, I'm just thinking of taking a six month leave next year so I can live in Europe, not work unless I want to, and pursue the arts. I'm thinking of doing a lot of traveling, photography, and writing.

I think a lot of the angst people have about corporate jobs is that people think about what they are missing out on. I think it's really important to not lose sight of what you enjoy, even if you only have a few hours a week to enjoy it.

Definitely agree. If you're thinking that you're missing out on life then make the change, go down a tangential path. Do not go through life bitching & whining that you didn't make the most of an opportunity.

Take the sabbatical and go to Europe for 6 months. If it turns out to not be what you expected, so what, you've learned something and grown.

The only real expectation that I have is that I'll come out of it with tons of experiences. Who knows what'll happen or not happen.

It's important to understand what your expectations from a startup founder life are. There are very few resources that explain what to expect and that it's really just hard work on problems that you care about.

The way the media glorifies the startup founder life is very misleading to budding founders.

The opening lecture in Sam's startup class was an eye opener in many ways and put into perspective what being a startup founder really means(especially the part that Dustin Moskovitz talks about).

http://startupclass.samaltman.com

I am suspicious of work/life advice from people whose ultimate life goals involve tropical vacations and alcohol.

I don't see what your ultimate life goals - or even having any - has to do with work/life advice. If you spend half your time working, and half your time on a tropical beach with a margarita, how is that a bad thing?

It's a signal of an immature/not quite baked thought process. Try spending a month on the beach sometime. It gets old.

I grew up in Florida and Mexico, so i'm aware that too much of the same thing gets old - which is why I spend up to a week on a beach at a time, and work the rest of the time in a big city. The dichotomy is blissful.

But even the idea that it can get old is very dependent on the person - some people's life goals are to surf, eat ceviche, and drink cerveza while fishing with friends. They may not get sick of it, while you or I might. Their work/life balance might be giving diving lessons in the spring in Trinidad and working a WWOOF off-season, interspersed with consulting work (a friend of mine). The dude in the article likes beaches and tropical drinks. As long as they can identify how to achieve a healthy balance, doesn't matter what it is.

I try to spend good portions of each day several months a year on various beaches in Maui. I can't think of many things I'd prefer than playing and swimming with my family at the beach. When I was single, a beach with a nice bar or bars nearby would have been a paradise.

There's an oversupply of ex-consultants and they all fancy themselves as the next Jeff Bezos (Bezos is ex-McKinsey and his company operates like it). As a current consultant who sees so many of his co-workers with this dream, I feel many of them are being unrealistic about their prospects. It's not like an ex-McKinsey consultant is really unique in VC pitches anymore.

But many end up bailing because these companies have an "up or out" culture (meaning you either get promoted or fired every 3 years -- with about 80% at each level getting the boot) that makes it very stressful. So it's pretty easy to say "Yeah, fuck this place, I'm gonna go be a startup founder!" when you're 90% sure you're getting fired next year. And being fired from McKinsey/Bain/BCG doesn't mean you're bad, it just means you're not a good fit for the role above you (i.e. if you're moving up from being an engagement manager, you're gonna get laid off if you're not a natural salesperson).

Thing is, being a startup founder is basically the same thing as working for McKinsey/Bain/BCG. It's still "up or out" with each round of funding, and the chances of success at each step are honestly smaller. You also don't have the firm's built-in network and research tools to help you be successful.

I don't even think the average payoffs are better in the startup world. I mean sure, if you can build your company into a unicorn and keep the momentum through an exit you will come out ahead. What are the chances of that, 0.0001%?

A better exit from McKinsey/Bain/BCG IMO would be to shack up with a "second-tier" consulting firm like Deloitte, PwC, Accenture, etc. Depending where you come in, you can pretty easily make partner within 4 or 5 years (anyone coming from the world of top-tier consulting is already used to the crazy workload required for this). Get to that point and you're pulling in $250k-$1M a year without much risk at all for as long as you want to keep doing it. And a generous pension (laugh if you want, but large LLPs are one of the few places where pensions make sense) to retire on whenever you decide you don't want to do it.

And then, if you still have the urge to run a startup, you're in a position where you'll have the knowledge, connections and financial security to go run a startup as the CEO who comes in and runs the show after the founders realize their limitations. IMO this is a better path because 1) any company hiring an expensive outside CEO is likely on an upward trajectory overall 2) VC funded startups are getting more risky, not less, so let the founders take that risk and 3) you can assess the cultural / product / market fit before you take the job.

You keep saying Bezos used to work at McKinsey, but I don't see that info anywhere else? He used to work at the trading firm D.E. Shaw, and Amazon seems to operate in a very un-McKinsey way in many ways (i.e. they don't use PowerPoint), so this is confusing...

Maybe he's confused since Jeff Bezos's wife is named Mackenzie? Mostly joking..

Yeah you're right - I guess I got Bezos mixed up with someone else.

Yes, it does not take all that much courage to quit a miserable consulting or finance job. I should know! My advice to people in this situation, as I was myself ~6 years ago, is not to quit with the intention of "doing a startup". Just admit that you are quitting to go mess around for a couple years. Then try to enjoy that, and maybe something will come of it.

That is a good article but it was on HN a few years ago.

A mistake I think people make is optimizing their lives for income rather than experiences and contentment. I have thoroughly enjoyed my career but I have kept my working hours to under an average of 25 hours a week for the last 30 years (not counting time writing, which is more of a simple pleasure in life than consulting).

Experiences can also cost money. Traveling can be done less expensively, but is not cheap. Being out in a boat out on the water every weekend is not cheap, but is an experience I live for. So when optimizing you have to find a balance where you can make enough money to enjoy the experiences you want to enjoy.

Travel is cheap if you're not doing it the five star hotel way :-)

Plane tickets are often 1-2k per person. Even cheap travel is expensive for most people. I never do the 5 star hotel way and it is still not cheap.

Travel costs time or money. I can travel for about the same price as staying at home, basically. But then I occasionally like hitchhiking and couchsurfing, and cooking with strangers in hostels, and hiking with a tent (areas in Europe allow you one night's stay on unoccupied land if you don't bother anyone).. takes a lot longer than the faster ways, but it's basically free. I only spend money on food and gifts to hosts. (It is also a priviledge of youth and health, I admit, to be able to take the bike to the next country/city/whatever.)

If you have no free time and feel overworked in your current job then surely starting a start up won't fix that.

What I learned from this: If you have to call your mommy when you quit your job, you're not ready to start your own business.

Also, 2 years after the call to mommy is not quite mature enough to start doling out advice.

This can't be serious, I know it's from 2014 but the author seriously showing of his egotists needs with a facebook photo (725 likes whoo) despite talking about not to care about social pressure is beyond understanding. And living from "inspirational" blog posts to wannabe entrepreneurs (= selling shovels during the gold rush) in a tourist resort? Be sure which dream you are following before quitting your boring corporate job, it's usually more meaningful than what you'll be end up doing, from what I'm seeing in this kind of posts.

Edit: sorry for the tone, I'm a bit emotive because I fell in this trap too, and now that I see through the marketing stuff I don't understand why this kind of post continue to be upvoted.

> there will be so many hidden costs, accountant fees, lawyer needs

I don't understand this. I do my own accounting and have never spent a single dime on a lawyer. It feels like I'm doing something illegal though because people keep saying this is such a huge cost.

Personal experience from having been through both sides:

People who come from corporate backgrounds tend to think having accountants and lawyers is necessary even when it's a one man company because they're used to being specialists, and accountancy / legal isn't what they do.

People who come from lean startup backgrounds tend to think they can get by on their own work and the advice they can get over a pint with a lawyer forever because they're used to being generalists. Doing things that they have no expertise in is what they do every day.

The reality tends to be somewhere in the middle. Doing your own accounts when it's just you is ~as hard as getting someone else to do it. Doing your own accounts when you're a team of 20 is enough of a time sink to drag down your overall productivity significantly. If you do go down the "professionals" route though, costs mount quickly.

Reminds me of something I once heard:

Starting your own business is great, you can work half days! And you get to decide which twelve hours that will be!

Sounds like he would have considered himself lucky to keep it to twelve hours.

"Entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week."

This statement, but itself, doesn't really give you the entire picture. I've had my own company for the last 10 years.

Running a company is more about controlling my own destiny, than the amount of hours I'm working. I can choose if I want to work 80 hours a week or 20...and I don't have a boss or a manager leading me on a path I know will be a failure.

So much life is about the intersection of preparation and timing. What Ali fails to mention is how his startup prepared him and supplied perspective for the lifestyle approach he is now taking. You rarely go from corporate job to traversing beaches with wi-fi access.

How is this on he front page?

So there are literally zero consulting companies that will pay a fair wage for 40 hours work? Or is it just that the fancy ones like McKinsey all want to run you ragged?

My read of this article could be summarized as: Want fanciness without the stress? Don't go for corporate world nor start a startup.

it was a good read, but a better title would have been,

"how quitting my dreadful corporate job for my startup dream lead me to a happy life of self-employed consulting."

Can we change the sensationalist f*cked up title?

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