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Comment by zerr | Hacker News Reader

> Amazon affiliate sites

I think this is a completely different mindset compared to engineers/"nerds", that's why most of us work for others instead of starting our own businesses.

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There is nothing wrong with working for others if it fulfills you. I envy people who can have comfortable lives with happy families and a simple desk job that pays for what they need. Something in my brain is telling me I need more or I won't be happy, so I have many startups I'm working on and have exclusively begun working for myself. The grass is always greener on the other side, that much I can say. Enjoy your comfy engineering job and be careful what you wish for.

If you are a nerd who wants to break into entrepreneurship, prepare for a lot of fun, but also prepare to do work you think is stupid or never saw yourself doing, only for it to end up as a niche product. That's fine.

To each their own, obviously, but I look at this list and it's just... depressing. He seems like the kind of person who gets a lot of fulfillment from things like this, but for me I just see a whole lot of time wasted on bullshit.

That's the main reason why I work for others. You can't form a health system startup that includes dozens of hospitals and thousands of patients per day.

Yes, when I hear of those who "made it" and talk that 99% of what they are doing now are meetings, PowerPoint slides, pitching to VCs, public speaking, marketing, etc... I'm thinking - but are they happy? I can't imagine myself being happy while having to do all those things... :)

Those things sound boring, but when you are doing them for your own business - your own idea - it’s a lot of fun.

This! - I'm in a similar space myself. At once envious of those happy with a decent day job - corp or whatever (one of my good buddies is a "garbage man" and he seems pretty damn happy).

A year into struggling as an entrepreneur and no longer working at BigCo - I couldn't be happier despite having to live with a crazy amount of anxiety :)

And there is that middle-ground of being an independent consultant from where it is even harder to make a step, especially when taking in count your own hourly rate :)

Not clear why he couldn't sell any of those sites.

If we’re talking about the affiliate sites, it’s because they collectively grossed a total of maybe 50 cents.

Wasn’t worth the time to try to sell them.

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