Comment by tharkun__ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tharkun__ | Hacker News Reader

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If you are on the same boat as described in your parent posts and making a million per year and are just waiting for the vesting then I would say if you can endure this, do it till vested and then quit and sell. Then invest this in a diversified portfolio (I'm assuming you have a few million by that time) that pays dividends.

Take a regular job. Try the best you can to find a nice position so you don't need to hop too much but basically the point is to find a good company that you can have fun at and still feel valuable. And if they try bullshit you don't care because you have all those dividends and you probably don't even need most of the salary.

To me at that point the salary and steady CV would be reassurance against bad stock performance. The dividends are reassurance that I have to take absolutely zero abuse at work and can even use that to make life better for the rest of the employees by being able to speak the truth from a position of financial security. The position fills the hole in life that would otherwise show up soon (sure, take a year for traveling the world or whatever but chances are you won't make it through a full year at a time anyway. Maybe contracting is best, schedule wise.

> If you are on the same boat as described in your parent posts and making a million per year and are just waiting for the vesting then I would say if you can endure this, do it till vested and then quit

That's pretty much the plan, but you lose me after that.

> The position fills the hole in life that would otherwise show up soon

The purpose of every life decision that I've made so far is to avoid ever having to work a job again again. I don't understand how anyone can "have fun" or "feel valuable" due to employment. Nobody would be there unless they were being paid for it, because all those coworkers were not there before they started getting paid (excluding interns, but that's also an oppressive dynamic).

The only data point I have is that school sucked while I was there. People told me I would miss it so much when I got older. They were very wrong. School sucked and was a huge waste of time. College was also a huge waste of time. I don't miss any of it at all.

The only thing that makes my career not a waste of time is that it will provide for a future where I can pursue my own interests without threat of hunger and homelessness.

I recognize that my position is considered extreme, and I'd like to be convinced otherwise. The only argument I ever hear is "oh you'll be so bored, you'll see, you'll come back" and it doesn't make any sense to me.

If I make it through a few more years of this, I'll find the answer and report back :)

I have exactly the same reasoning. Except I’m not paid a million a year. I can’t fathom how people would miss work and feel empty without it.

I get what you are trying to say. I feel like it might be such a strong feeling because of how bad it really is working where you currently work.

I personally do not miss school at all either. I miss some parts of university for sure. And not _just_ the party parts ;)

As for work, I have phases and those seem to corroborate what "people say" about missing work. What I mean is that on a vacation for example, if it's long enough, I sometimes want to "do" stuff again instead of just being on vacation. And I don't mean I want to be back at work work specifically but yes I do get "bored". If you think about it, why do the billionaire sons and daughters throw parties all the time and such? Probably not because they have a fulfilling life otherwise.

Now when I say vacation, I don't have slack on my phone, I do not check work email and everyone knows they can call me if things get dire but nobody has ever done so. I know this is in stark contrast to some other folks on here that worked 4 hours per day on their "vacation".

Personally I want to make a difference in how people work. Both now and also if I had millions of dollars. So both now and in that case I would want to provide a good work environment and get rid of things like BS deadlines, "do this by EOD or else" and such stuff. With millions in the bank I could be much much more frank than I already am. Of course I'd take much longer vacations and work less.

My current workplace is actually pretty good in many aspects as to the fun at work part and it is fulfilling to build stuff that lots of people use. Our stack for the most part is awesome as is the dev experience (best I've had so far but maybe there are better ones I just don't know yet). Of course there are parts I hate and that a few million in the bank would totally turn the tables on vis a vis 'fix this BS or I leave'.

YMMV but yes please do report back :)

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