Early Retirement is a False Idol
37signals.com
37signals.com
Choosing to work doing something you love is worlds apart from having to work doing something.
I don't think you're using that word correctly. The person works 80 to 100 hours a week and is miserable is a strawman? That's odd, because I've met so many of them. I've been one of them.
Which is not to say that there aren't a few people in the world who want nothing more than to work 100 hours a week. If you are one, good luck with that.
Most people I know who are aspiring entrepreneurs don't... think everything will be roses after they've made a lot [of] money.
Most just want enough money so they never have to worry about it again.
Am I the only one who sees a contradiction between these two sentences?
And just how much is "enough money that you never have to worry about it again"? I know people with no money who never worry about money, and I know people with pots of money who worry constantly. The worry has very little to do with the amount of money. The worry comes from you.
DHH is suggesting that one way to be happy is to get a job you like, work a sustainable number of hours, live within your means, and then stop worrying about it all the time. You've got an education, a skillset, and a salary that is the envy of the world, so what are you so afraid of?
> I know people with no money who never worry about money, and I know people with pots of money who worry constantly.
This seems really bogus. I know poor people, wealthy people, and ultra rich people. The kinds of things they each worry about are totally different. Sure, they may all technically "worry" about money, but that's where the similarity ends.
> You've got an education, a skillset, and a salary that is the envy of the world, so what are you so afraid of?
A serious medical condition with myself, a family member, or a friend. Generally any problem that would prevent me from being able to work for an extended period of time. You don't have to be paranoid to worry about this. Unfortunately, it's just not that rare.
More personally I'm afraid of having to significantly limit my interests to fall within relatively limited amounts of expendable time and money or to things that are profitable.
Dude, buy some insurance. You can get boatloads of insurance without needing to be mega-rich.
Fortunately, burnout is usually cureable. And it's a great learning experience. One learns how to avoid it in the future.
A serious medical condition with myself, a family member, or a friend.
Insurance. Yes, the insurance market in much of the USA is hideously broken, and so it might cost quite a lot. But I assure you that, for most people, it is easier, cheaper, and surer to get disability insurance than it is to become independently wealthy.
(For many people, it's probably easier to become a citizen of a country with a better insurance system than it is to become independently wealthy. I wouldn't recommend that strategy to just anyone, but if that's what it takes to stop worrying...)
I'm afraid of having to significantly limit my interests to fall within relatively limited amounts of expendable time and money...
Well, some people solve this problem by having no outside interests at all, working 80 to 100 hours a day until they become rich. That's one method.
Other people take out insurance: They work a little, but then they play a little. That helps hedge against the prospect that you'll die of a stress-induced heart attack, or succumb to RSI and become disabled, before you get rich. If that happens you'll never get to play at all. Or, if your hobby is "having kids", it gives you a chance to pursue it before you grow too old.
Now, if you got your money from doing a startup, who gets your F-bomb? :P
Everyone who picked on you at high school, everyone who picked on you at primary school, the disapproving family members who told you to go get a real job, the insecure best friend who constantly undermined your confidence, and generally anyone who ever doubted your ability to finish what you started in style.
At least, that's my motivation. It may not be very healthy, but it gets the job done.
But I most of all want to create something to help people and I get very satisfied by solving problems.
You could call it a disproportionate competitive streak allied with over-sensitivity about having been wronged in the past (and there's not a human being out there that hasn't been "wronged" by their definition of the term). Combine that with a good dose of competence, skill, talent, etc, and a bit of inferiority complex (which is natural for gifted people, see the "dots and holes" article from a while back, link below), and you have the perfect recipe for someone with that irrepressible need to show the world what he's made of.
It's no bad thing. That's how most progress was made, I think. Thomas Edison and Newton were definitely both competitive jerks with inferiority complexes. Hardly bad company to be in.
http://books.google.com/books?id=H-GfO0jkBLsC&pg=PA38...
God damn, but google books links are ghastly. At any rate, the saying goes way, way before that.
It won't be the reality and maybe even if we know that the fantasy is still motivating. However when the fantasy turns your life into an unbearable drudge it should be reevaluated.
For Jerry Yang, losing Yahoo would be like losing his soul.
At least I am sure he can afford a psychotherapist, if all else fails.
"And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-06150...
(mod my comment to 0 points please.)
Funny thing is, you seldom hear people give that advice to obsessed painters, sculptors, musicians, etc. Why? Because artistic passions are viewed differently than "jobs." But, what if your job IS your artistic passion? Why shouldn't entrepreneurs be viewed as "artists" instead of "workers?"
I should really do more blogging and less news.yc, or crosspost my blog entries as comments, or vice versa.
This simile is awesome.
Nothing wrong with "waterfall-planning" if it's done properly. Problem is, it usually isn't.
I understand that sometimes you need to release early and often. This is when you can't conduct proper anaysis. Why not? Because you're trying for a home run building something big and you don't know where your project will take you or who will eventually use it. Like a Web 2.0 or social site.
But for the rest of us, "waterfall-planning" is just another name for the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC), which is an excellent way to develop systems. But you must conduct analysis first. You must answer the question "what" before you examine the question "how".
Most developers do not know how to do this. How can you tell? When their waterfall phases take too long (more than a month for analysis for most projects). When they say things like, "The user doesn't know what he needs." Yes he does. You just have to keep digging until you know.
Once a good programmer learns how to conduct analysis he becomes a good developer. Then projects become like shooting fish in a barrel. You biggest problem will be convincing your customers that you can do what they think can't be done.
You said it yourself: Most developers don't know how to perform the level of front loaded analysis required for a successful SDLC project. Ergo, "most" waterfall methods fail miserably. The method is out of sync with how humans work.
When your process boils down to creating a team so elite that they would succeed regardless, it's not much of a process.
Wrong.
The method works perfectly when done properly. Because it's perfectly in sync with how humans work.
So why don't most people know how? 2 possible reasons:
- All we really have to do is stay one step ahead of the users. So we don't have to be very good.
- The field is so young we still don't have adequate well-established standards and procedures. Imagine "release early and often" as the standards for law, medicine, or bridge building.
I've heard this argument too many times from people who have never done it right so they think it can't be done.
If the method was in sync with normal work patterns, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Many of my hobbies and things I do for fun are not monetizeable.
I guess by extension if you did what you loved most we'd all be porn stars. It is more about doing something you like.
It is having the privileige of not having to worry about money and being able to do exactly what you want.
If I sold a company for 200 million dollars I'd give half of it to charity, keep 10 millions as my own money and then put the rest in some big hard interesting project.
Anyway. If done right; Work is a hobby that makes you money, and a hobby is work that costs you money. Why retire when you can make money working on a hobby?
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.both the post (and the sentiments) that inspired seem to be based on false premise: you can't, realistically, expect a jackpot in one year. working 100 hours won't create a jack pot for you either (but it may alienate those who are likely to increase your chances - co-founders, employees and helpful friends).
I'll do what I want to do the way I want to do it, thank you very much Mr. Hansen.