For me, it resonates, because the perspective of "doing my job, having friends and watching movies" sounds depressingly empty to me. I want to work on the next rocket to Mars (yes, I really do want to work on space rockets - because I care about space rockets).
I don't buy into the pressure you're seeing either. If your heart doesn't drive you to strive for meaning in your own work, then you won't be happy chasing it because social pressure tells you to. Not everyone ticks this way, and this is fine.
It's just that you read online about all these people that do open-source stuff, create their own website/business, build tools, do research etc. that you feel left out and the big pressure to do something meaningful. In addition nowadays you have to do something meaningful for the world, but it's hard to impress the world or the community, because in your community (like the hacker-news, reddit, indie hacker) there are now thousands or millions of people, you have to do something very substantial to actual get noticed.
What more do you want? Think of how many people there are in the world who want that. Who just wish they didn't dread waking up every morning to go to work. I love my job and I'm completely fulfilled with it. It's all how you look at it - we've made it as far as I'm concerned, anything else is icing on the cake.
Really, the question you might want to ask yourself is: do you even want to be a CTO? I don't, it sounds like a set of skills and activities I don't really want to work on. I'd rather be a good engineer who helps other people grow in their career, who also gets to fish and surf in the morning and play video games in the evening.
Whenever I feel the way you're feeling, I think back to this quote by Kurt Vonnegut about Joseph Heller:
True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island.
I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel 'Catch-22' has earned in its entire history?"
And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."
And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"
And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."
Not bad! Rest in peace!
People don't write about ordinary lives normally because they don't get clicks and they don't grab attention. But if you're not seeking attention why does it matter?
It's partially why I enjoy the Great British Baking Show; all the bakers are otherwise perfectly ordinary people living ordinary lives, and they just bake as their hobby and the competition is relatively cheerful. Compare that to most American reality shows where all the people do is live and breathe being a master chef literally every second of their lives and everything is extremely stressful.
Why? It's your life. You're the only one living it. Live it how you want. It doesn't matter what other people do. If you're happy and fulfilled doing the things you do, that's awesome. Honestly, that's really the best most people can and should strive for in their lives. Some people just aren't contented or fulfilled doing those things, that's fine too.
Everyone lives their own life, it's cool to see what other people do and be inspired by it, but no one's really forcing you if you really don't want to. But if you feel pressure, maybe you're not as fulfilled as you think?
Don't sweat it. Just like there are billionaires, there are also these mystical productivity billionaires. It's a cool thing to behold but it's very much not the norm.
Just make sure to not let your passion drive you too far from loved ones. (:
I mean, this was probably my biggest fear about parenthood. Observing other parents, I've noticed that a lot of them lost everything that made them interesting. The kids are the only things they care about now. I don't see this as a good thing - not for parents, and not for the children. If a parent's entire self gets consumed by child-rearing, what example do they set for their children? That the point of their adult life is to have a (arbitrary, but hopefully well-paying) job in order to support their own children, perpetuating the cycle of doing nothing but breeding and dying? Isn't that meaningless and boring? To me, it is. And I'd hazard a guess that this is where midlife crisis comes from - when one's children are self-sufficient and the role of a parent is over, one realizes they have a 20 years old hole in their life, into which everything they were disappeared.
(This is my perspective as of right now. But the funny thing with perspectives is that they depend on where you stand - so who knows, maybe I'm wrong now and three years from now I'll be arguing the exact opposite? I don't expect to, but I can't rule it out.)
That's an important point, isn't it?
Home office is a wonderful thing, but now that I'm a dad, I find myself wishing for an actual, external office. Not because I don't like my own home, but because catching even a tiniest fragment of my daughter's cry next door is incredibly, incredibly distracting - even though my wife is taking care of her perfectly, I have to fight myself to not just get out of the study and render assistance.
The irony is that some of the wealthiest people I’ve met seem the least happy and settled. It’s so strange.
The concept of having “enough” is fundamentally incompatible with the hyper-growth startup, social-media driven society that we’re creating. Because having enough means that you’re giving up on the rat race, at least to a degree.
>>> giving up on the rat race
means I end up in a tough position. Either I leave the race, knowing that I'll have hard time to finance another race (kids, etc.); either I stay in, but then it means doing things I don't like.
middle class man's dilemma.
There’s not a single county in the US where a minimum wage income covers the cost of a two-bedroom apartment.[1]
Economically, we’re entering a new gilded age where legislative decisions increasingly favor the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
0: https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2018
1: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2019-06-20/...
Individual, not household. And that appears to cover all "wage earners", including cases like college students working part time. Median household income is $63k according to https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/09/us-median-hou...
I'm going to call bullshit on that. Federal minimum wage is over $1000 per month at full time and I've seen 2br in my county for $550+utilities. I don't disagree with your general point but that report did a piss-poor job. I suspect they only looked in urban areas.
This is only true if you define paying for said apartment using the 30% of your income rule of thumb, which on top of a two bedroom apartment on minimum wage for a single earner is REALLY stretching reality. Federal minimum wage covers it if you increase 30% upwards easily in a lot of counties.
This unhealthy obsession was in large part what drove the United States to what it eventually became in 2019 over just a few hundred years. This is probably an unpopular sentiment, but what makes us bad is often what makes us good. It is not like this obsession has no upside.
It makes society run so much faster. But can't guarantee that it runs in the right direction. And so many signs say it's not.
Alternatively, might they simply value to enter world (through themselves & others)?
Personally I think a lot of the overachiever hype/nonsense is designed to just remind people how little they are. Its not to build them up. Its a different but same version of something used to sell products like cosmetics: make people feel insecure then sell them something.
(Now someone will argue I'm somehow against doing your best. Nice try)
For me, I was part of early-career layoffs during a recession. I push myself because I was put in a hard situation, and I want control over my career.
I have that now, and I still push (though not as hard) to maintain it. It keeps my anxiety over providing for my responsibilities in check. I want to be independent.
> Why isn't it okay anymore to just do my job, have friends and watch movies?
The reason you get to "just do your job, have friends, and watch movies," is because of the advances in science/technology/government/economics/art/etc that gave you and your ancestors enough surplus in productivity so you can afford spending some of your time watching movies. Those leaps would not have been possible if the persons working on them shared your attitude.
So much suffering has been avoided by people who sacrificed their comfort discovering vaccines, inventing engines, or rallying people behind a cause. It's more than likely that you and I would not even be alive today without those sacrifices.
I don't know about you, but I feel I owe my life and my privileges to people who didn't "just do their job." And it inspires me to pay it forward.
Now don't get me wrong, maybe it is okay to "just do your job and watch movies." But don't lose sight of why you get to do that.
On the one hand, I'm with 'icelancer here - there's not enough driven people in the society (that is, driven to do things, and not driven to gain status by incidentally doing some things). The more they are, the faster things can improve. On the other hand, everything seems to indicate that there will always be something to improve, so if everyone was driven like this, nobody would be left to enjoy the fruits of these sacrifices, making them ultimately pointless.
I don't know what the right balance is. I know I myself am not going to pressure anyone into seeking meaning outside their social circle and entertainment. From what I've observed, there seems to be a default balance - some people are happy with having a decent and a loving circle of friends (like OP), and some are unhappy with it (like myself). I see no good justification for forcing either kind to change, and I don't see either as better or worse than the other.
I agree. But to me, this is not a dichotomy. As in, you don't have to choose between complete comfort (do your job and watch movies) and total sacrifice (devote all your time to a cause). You can have time for friends and hobbies and still do great good for your community and the larger society.
Partially because you having friends and watching movies doesn't make anyone rich. When people give you advice, it's meant to improve their lives, not yours. A guy who writes books will tell you to read more books, a guy who organizes seminars will tell you to attend more seminars, a venture capitalist will tell you to create a startup. (If you need to be told that watching movies is all right, you have to ask Netflix.)