> regardless of how wealthy he becomes
It may be the reverse that happens here: he is wealthy enough to have time to play with Lisp.
It may be the reverse that happens here: he is wealthy enough to have time to play with Lisp.
For people making a living wage, some think “I don’t have the money to travel.” Then when they have the money, they think “I don’t have the time to travel.” They don’t really travel until they retire, and then they have trouble going anywhere that isn’t friendly to their knees and faltering eyesight, so they buy an RV.
Others travel in college from hostel to hostel. When they get work, they negotiate longer vacations to travel, or they deliberately become giggers so they can travel.
I met a couple in Thailand who climbed, they worked five months a year around the clock as nurses, and climbed seven months a year literally everywhere. They lived on the cheap so they would have more climbing days.
I have similar stories about people who ride bicycles and dive. If you are passionate, don’t wait for some magical day when you can fly the Concorde to go climbing in Europe with your friends (true story about some Yosemite dirtbags who came into illicit cash).
If you’re passionate about a thing, go do that thing. Now.
Does that work? I've tried to negotiate more vacation days with every job offer I've received, and it's never worked.
To negotiate more vacation days at hiring, you need multiple offers. Then you can tell them “I will accept your offer if it includes six weeks of vacation. Otherwise I’m going to Facebook”. It probably means negotiating a little less hard on pay since you need to focus to get it. But that’s probably fair.
I've used that exact line, and they didn't budge, so I went to Facebook. I guess everywhere I've applied is large tech companies. It might work better at smaller firms.
Second would be maybe start asking about that when the offer letter comes in. At which point they are invested in you.
He got me a $5,000 raise, no extra vacation time. Said that he did his best and he was the type of person I'd absolutely believe.
Ever since then, in my mind, a vacation day has to be worth more than $1,000. Simple economics, right? Somehow giving me $5,000 maximizes shareholder value more than giving me 5 extra days off.
My next job was more generous with vacation. They used the accrual method with a maximum and there was an extended period where it had become difficult to take time off and they'd stopped putting our PTO balance on our paystubs... so at some point I track down where to find the info and realize I'd lost 10 days of vacation accrual.
I about lost my mind and HR couldn't understand why I felt like they'd cheated me out of more than $10,000.
Felt trapped in the job forever 'cause eventually I'm earning I think 27 vacation days per year, and 10 to start is pretty typical, maybe 15 if you're lucky... And as much as we might like to think everything is negotiable, reality on the ground is that very little besides salary can be successfully negotiated.
A vacation day is a paid thing. Unpaid time off is not. It's all money and productivity in the end, but in many companies it's easier to negotiate unpaid time off, than to negotiate extra vacation days. Even if the money works out the same in the end.
Paid time off
Unpaid time off
Leave of absence
Quit and reapply when you get back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paid_time_off
Perhaps it’s best, as another comment suggests, to always include the adjectives “paid” or “unpaid.”
Google also has up to 5 weeks paid vacation in the US, starting at 3 weeks when you join. After 3 years, you move to 4 weeks, and after 5 years you max out at 5. Other countries basically have their government mandated time off rules, but 5 weeks plus unpaid plus holidays is pretty good.
Each week of unpaid time is thus about 2% of salary. That said, I'm definitely in the minority in using unpaid time off (though, even more strange for me is how many colleagues let their vacation accrual reach the maximum and even forfeit days...).
This is discussed in the Valley Uprising documentary as well (the whole doc is amazing and definitely worth your time).
On the other hand, John Long is a raconteur par excellence, and I recommend all of his books as entertaining reading about an important time in climbing history.
——
One thing Long wrote/claimed that is not mentioned in the linked post is that two of the dirtbags involved leveraged their haul into an ongoing drug-dealing business. Until they were found, shot dead, in their home.
That's the kind of thing people say because they assume it must be so. If you do that about unconventional things, which this software was/is, you'll simply reproduce the conventional view.
until you have enough money to make more money without adding much time..