That time I told my wife I wanted to quit my job
keygen.sh
keygen.sh
I knew it needed to happen but I’d been stressing about how to tell her for nearly a month. The amount of relief that came from her approval and endorsement was incredible. I was less nervous about quitting than I was nervous about telling her.
Props to you man. Well done.
I'm in a similar situation. I'm working on a thing and my wife has been supporting me for some time now.
Years ago she told me to leave my job and focus on my thing, but I was afraid. I've been working since I was 19 years old and I have trust issues. It was very difficult for me to believe in myself and jump into the void but I'm 42 and if I don't do it now I will never do it.
Anyway, I'm a couple of months from the first beta launch. I'm happy, anxious, afraid, hopeful... all at the same time. I hope I'll be able to write a similar blog post in a year or two.
It's really interesting to get some backstage access to how this fantastic product came to be and what underpins the motivating thesis behind it.
From one founder (also with little ones and a fantastically supportive partner) to another, my hat's off to you. My many thanks to both you and your partner. Being able to just grab keygen.sh and integrate licensing into our product helped us go from MA to GA in about a week and was also essential in getting some investors over the hump to funding (because we could show traction and an easier path to more of it). As a result, I got to reduce my stress level and spend more time with my kids over the summer.
The reason I say that is because you're basically dealing with two classes of customers at that point. One for your product and one for your equity, and if there's gross misalignment with either you're going to have a bad time. If the latter fundamentally doesn't understand the former, you'll have a bad time.
It was one of the very few times in my life when I've let other people convince me to ignore my gut feelings. I'm not blaming my ex-girlfriend, it was my decision, but it was the wrong decision.
- - - -
For your amusement here are some details of the business: they had no QA department, the users were our QA. All of the business logic was in stored procedures in the DB which, as a result, was always on fire even as we continually upgraded the hardware. Our HTML was 25% white space because our PHP guy liked deep indentation. He was a terrible programmer but he was a co-founder and a friend of the DB/sysadmin co-founder so he couldn't/wouldn't be fired. I tried to explain to him once that arrays, linked lists, and hash tables were different things but he refused to believe me because the only experience he had was with PHP and JS. The DB/sysadmin guy was a total "Master-Blaster" (You know "Who run Bartertown!?" from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome), if the CEO asked him to do something he didn't want to do he would throw actual screaming fits or just lie to him and say "That's impossible." They built a skating half-pipe in the office even though none of them skated. It was madness. But the users loved us and the numbers went up and up, so investors were lining up to vie for the chance to give them money. Eventually they (the investors) sidelined the three co-founders and now the company is a Wall street darling and a household word. Go figure.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/10/when-...
I think the absolute greatest benefit of this is that if your project doesn't work the only thing you have lost is some of your time and effort.
I know people who had "idea" and they decided they have some money saved so they will quit their day job.
And in most cases it just doesn't work. One friend ended up getting divorced and then re-hired and with debt for the rest of his life.
It is important to remember that most ideas do not work out in the end. But there will be more ideas.
I think the healthiest process is to approach your ideas with mindset that what you get is you can either succeed with your idea or you want to set yourself up better for the next idea that comes.
If you look at success stories more often than not they are preceded by failures. If these people treated their idea as if it was the last one they will ever have, they would fail right away and we would never hear about them.
If you choose to do this, read your employer's IP assignment policy very carefully. If you work for a large or medium-sized tech company, it is likely that your employer asserts ownership of all IP you produce, at work or at home, using their equipment or yours. This ability is limited in some regions, but even California allows companies to do this if the subject matter of the work is in some way related to the company's business. You don't want to spend 2 years working on a startup, have it gain some level of success, then have your former employer's lawyers mire you in IP lawsuits for the rest of its existence.
Personally, I would NEVER work for a company that would try to take ownership of something that I made on my own time, effort and resources.
And while I never had anybody try this one on me I had companies try other stuff.
One company tried to exclude me from my industry by smuggling into contract that I agree not to compete with them for a year after leaving them, competing defined as working in any way with other companies this particular one has any ties to. And since they produce popular banking software and also deliver contractors to practically every Polish bank, it would mean I would be excluded from every single bank doing business in Poland.
So I just politely wrote them that I cannot accept that but I can agree not to work for any company that I personally get involved with through working with them and they grudgingly changed the contract terms.
In the end, if you are polite and reasonable it is almost always possible to modify the contract terms.
First, don't hobby in the same space as your employer. Then, hack on the project a little bit, and send your manager and director an email. Explain how it's invigorated you and given you a testing ground for technologies that you will be using to achieve $mission at work. Ask for the company's blessing to work on the project in spare hours on your own equipment.
In most cases, you'll get an encouraging response. Reply and say thanks and ask for help getting clearance from Legal and/or a VP or higher.
I did this myself building Cronitor.
"I just finished reading 1984." - No one ever finishes reading that book, per se. It reads you and then spits you out.
"and I still don't have a go-to growth channel" - no idea what that even means. Me and a couple of chaps have been running a little IT business in the UK for 20 years. We have around 20 employees and t/o about GBP1.5M. Nothing fancy. If you can pay the bills and sleep at night, I call that a win.
Amen to that. Of all scifi books to use as the “things have come full circle” closer, this seemed deeply ominous and disturbing to me. It’s like some sort of “this could go super cool or all come unglued” season enders.
I wish this guy the best of luck and hope it just gets better. The beginning to a happily ever after. But if the tragic ethos of 1984 is his victory lap, my anxiety worries there’s a darker sequel to this story a few years down the road.
I still can't believe 1984 isn't required reading. I wonder if anything pertinent/worthwhile is any longer.
Back in 2001, I was living in a small village half an hour drive from the city. We thought living in the country will be fantastic. I had a great job, working for a US company. Super-hard and very interesting projects, I could come and leave the work as I please. Then, 9/11 happened and all investors disappeared. My pay was cut in half. At the same time, had to go to the army (I chose civil service to pay that out), so I could only work half-time on my job - another half of my pay went away. Suddenly this was unsustainable, and I had a pregnant wife. My solution - no problem, I will start my own business.
While it all worked out well in the end, the next year was terrible. I would leave the house at 6:15AM, be at the civil service until 3PM. Then go to the job and work until 8PM. Then go home and work on the side project until 2AM. Relationship with my wife deteriorated to the point of almost no return as I was overstressed and impossible to live with. We constantly struggled with debt. And my brain fried from overwork and lack of sleep. People would speak to me and I would not remember it after 5 minutes. It took a lot of time to get back to normal afterwards.
In hindsight, starting a side project was a terrible decision for that time. I should have made sure to safeguard the health of the family. We should have moved back to the city. We could have moved to live with my parents for a while. Anything would be better than the path I took, in my arrogance and need to provide for my family the way I decided is the way to go. The same financial independence would come, with far less stress, if I stopped to reevaluate what can be done - and talked with my wife more. When someone asks me for advice, I always say - do not risk everything for the chance of success. With family, it's family first.
Wait, what? Was there some sort of conscription introduced in 2001?
The ability to build a SaaS, sell it as a subscription to other is amazing. Compare with our old parents, without a computer, they need a huge chunk of money to setup a biz(buying equipment, office space etc).
Especially when you're one of the erly to market(look like keygen.sh is a great one) and can move fast enough, in a market that people are willing to pay more than $50 per month, it can grow very quick.
Good job rolling it out and make it sustaisable.
I can only imagine the psychic damage done to people who hate their jobs, feel sick when they think about going in to work the next day, spending hour after hour in situations that just make them miserable, but can't get out. Can't afford to just quit. In my mind, it would feel like serving time. Feel like a prison sentence with no release date. I recognise my good fortune in life in being able to just quit; even just knowing I always have that option makes everything bad in the life of employment more bearable.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, I would rather be homeless than trapped in a job that's making me miserable with no end in sight. It's dehumanizing.
Of course, many people don't have that choice (I may not either if serious medical issues come up)-- there is no doubt in my mind this causes terrible suffering and contributes to many suicides.
My problem now is that I have no shortage of ideas, I'm interested in everything. I find it hard to focus and I'm paralyzed with so many ideas. I question whether I should have ever given up the service business!
Hats off to Mr.Keygen for making the plunge. Your success is motivation for a lot of us!
I used to be in this position but then I actually became pretty passionate about making sure startups can make it through the growth phase and still deliver.
"Please don't ask as much of me in the future, I am at a breaking point"
"Please do more for me in the future, I am at a breaking point"
You see the difference in these two? In the first you ask for yourself to do less. In the second you ask for your partner to do more. The second often leads to your partner also burning out and then nobody has any capacity to spare creating a horrible situation.
The super power isn't the support part, but being able to live with less part. Demanding high living standards and thus high workload from your partner is the kryptonite.
This blog post basically no different from the other "so I did X and now I'm a big success" anecdotal LinkedIn/Medium/Tweet thread posts.
Not everyone is allowed to break gender roles.
Edit: not going to promise this is the best reference/source, but it is at least one: https://time.com/4425061/unemployment-divorce-men-women/
When the husbands in these relationships lost their job did they try to get back out there? Did they help at home? Did they do anything about it? If my wife lost her job and showed no motivation to get another one then I'd probably divorce her too. Part of what I admire in my partner is her incredible work ethic.
Maybe instead of complaining about "gender roles" complain about people picking shitty spouses and not having hard conversations about these sort of situations before they actually happen.
Admittedly, you also mention "bad at relationships" and that element was present on both sides as well.
For what it's worth, that was his second attempt to marry someone after he broke up with my mother. The first was with a woman who hated me in absurd levels to the point that she would attempt to choke me and throw knives at me because (according to my father, I was too young to actually engage her in any form of discussion) I reminded her of his previous relationship. And all that happened after 4 years of him being in a casual relationship with her.
Anyways, I don't know if I would call it changing or rather that there are people who try to hide their true colors until I get what they want.
May I suggest that it is highly unlikely there were no warning signs. This level of violence does not come out of nowhere (neither in women nor in men). It tends to consequence of escalations. The hate toward the offspring itself should have been seen as warning sign.
Like, yes, dad is there victim of domestic violence too. But like with women who pick yet another abuser again, there is issue with partner selection, not knowing warning signs or interpreting them as passion or some variant of that.
In our society, we are used to seeing people getting at least vocal support when things get hard, harassment at work, inability to ask for higher pay, etc. We just forget that, when it’s men, the advice is “Ok maybe work gave you trust issues, but have you tried to man up? Why would you expect support from a spouse if you, yourself, aren’t self-supported?”
It defeats the idea of “he for she, she for he.”
Yes, why should you expect support from a spouse if you aren't doing anything for yourself? This goes for men and women. Of course both parties should be allowed moments of vulnerability, but I thought it was pretty cleat that my statements were in the context of a long-term struggle. If my wife gets fired and has a bad week, I'll be there to support her and would expect the same in return. If she has a bad month, we'll sit down and have a serious talk about what she needs to do going forward.
If the only support you're getting is "man up" then maybe you should find yourself a different social circle and/or partner.
"He for she, she for he" means just that. It explicitly does not mean "He for she even when she isn't there for she, she for he even when he isn't there for he".
If you expect people to "support" you whilst you make no personal effort then perhaps you should reevaluate your outlook on life as a whole. That isn't how things should work in a healthy relationship.
This is "have you tried not being poor" for mental health: it's not actually actionable advice.
Yes, but this is not the world we live in. Awareness campaigns all go towards telling people to get support and talk about their mental problems. Maybe we are weakening people, I don’t know, I’m just saying that we don’t tell people to swallow up their problems, and in France for example, we’ve raised taxes to be able to fund a one-billion-euros plan to provide various kinds of help for those soft issues for women.
In fact, those very people tell men that they don’t speak enough.
But when a man raises a grave issue that blocks his progress, the answer is launched automatically: “Everyone would be better off if they just tried a little bit harder to be more mentally resilient”. In other words: “k bye!”
It’s not that we should or shouldn’t be resilient, it’s that we tell people to provide help to their spouse and expect help from them, only to notice that said spouse can be relied upon like a house of cards during difficult times.
In this specific example, when women loose jobs, they are expected to take on most housework until they find a new job.
Some years ago, I burned out, and was asked by my doctor to stay home, and this was followed by crushing depression. I was broken for months until I pieced myself back together, with help (therapy, meds, spending time with my kids...). My spouse says she was afraid I was lost, not going bacl to work, afraid I'd be broken forever. Thank heavens she just didn't ditch my ass, she helped me back and I'm watching myself more than ever, because I don't want that to happen twice.
Seeing the person you love falling apart in such a way (depression, burnout) can tempt you to reevaluate the person as a whole. But if you can't stay and help when I'm broken, what kind of partner are you? Sure there's a limit, and everyone must draw a line somewhere (and I'm pretty sure I decided mine before we married), but losing one's job isn't there for me.
There is no indication of 'why' she might show no motivation. The assumption here seems to be that she's a freerider, a burden, and not a partner with motivation issues. And I cited good reasons for lacking motivation. From personal experience.
Yes, there are people that become lazy, or show their laziness after some time hiding it behind an easy 0-producing job. And yes sometimes you discover that you don't like that in your partner and maybe you're now too different, etc.
But this hustle mentality, don't stop and think, just find a job, any job, gogogogogogogogogo, isn't how I want to be treated when laid off or broken in some way. There's a lot of talk on HN about mental health, burnout, depression, but also lots of people that seem to be OK to ditch a partner at the first sign of him or her not being 100% 'on' all the time.
There's many discussions to be had when you realize your partner doesn't want to work anymore. The first one is probably 'downsizing' as fast as possible. Can we live on one salary? How much time? What do we let go to weather this? Do you think it's temporary, do you want to switch careers? Are you ready to lose those comforts? Are you thinking about the near future? Do you have plans? Do I sit in them? do you want to try therapy? Maybe not all the questions on the same day. Decisions, together. And red lines if you must. Money, kids, health. Yours and your partners.
I was just saying, maybe someone you trusted and observed having fine work ethics (if that's what floats your boat) changing suddenly, is maybe sign of a problem you were supposed to be helping with, as the other person in this relationship.
There's a reason "you're not a real women" isn't an insult, but "you're not a real man" is. There's a reason men live 3-10% shorter than women and commit suicide several times more often (in my country 8 times more often). And there's a reason divorce law is absurdly sexist.
This is not to say "women are evil", there's no secret conspiracy to reinforce the gender roles, no "matriarchy" nor "patriarchy" keeping the status quo. It's simply people repeating what they were taught about life to their children because "that's the way it should be".
So the fix isn't to "find better spouses", the fix is to make people better human beings and live the way they want.
That is the "patriarchy". It was never claimed to be a Dr Evil thing.
Also calling it "patriarchy" when it hurts both genders equally and is reinforced by both genders equally - is counterproductive.
Another related concept in feminism is "toxic masculinity" and that name is even worse. If you're trying to solve a problem don't start by naming it "it's all their faultism".
Curiously I've never heard anybody call the same phenomenon happening to women "toxic femininity".
One thing I might note is that a lot of these kind of harmful social constructs were applied to women 100 years ago. Things as trivial as wearing trousers and as important as voting or working would have been considered "not womanlike" back then. What has changed that is ~100 years of the feminist movement, which made all of these and more acceptable for women.
But there hasn't been and still isn't such a movement for men. And I would suggest that that's what we need.
No need for the whataboutism: gender roles exists and are deeply entrenched in some societies.
A simple measure is how often divorces end with the ex-husband having to pay spousal support to the ex-wife and not the other way around.
This is a clear indication of how the legal system expects men to be "providers" and, therefore, woman careers and financial independence to be less important.
If you don't do traditional she stays at home with kids thing, you won't have to pay it. Because either it was you being at home or she had job too.
Basically what women do at all time is weave a healthy psychological support net of people. We, the men, should learn to do the same.
That's not really how it works, though. The support net is given to women because, subconsciously, society understands the value of women. A civilisation where the women are unhappy and take their own lives is not going to work beyond one generation for obvious reasons. This isn't something that women work to achieve while men don't bother. Telling men they should just "get support" like a woman is similar to telling a poor person they should just buy a house because it's a good investment. It's not as simple as that.
Some guys started doing this. "MGTOW monks" and Men's Rights Activists, for example. They were quickly ostracized as hateful misogynists, despite their focus largely being on providing help, support, and motivation to rectify particularly-unique male problems. They have some demographic overlap with the maladjusted incel demographic so of course all communities get painted with that same brush.
When everyone around you shits on you and belittles everything you do, you're playing on expert mode.
My pet favourite example is the ”you’re shit and going to fail. You should do what I did”. This is advice inevitably comes from very toxic personalities who are in serious trouble in one way or another.
I wouldn't be the person I am today or have the success I have without my supporting wife.
Thank you for sharing OP!
1. My lack of skills as a lead salesperson. I'm really effective at many roles - both for enterprise and start up (e.g. - CTO, dev, BA, product mgr, project mgr, etc.)...but when it comes to selling/sales...wow, do i suck...at least as the lead. I'm really good as a wingman/second banana...but to get leads, or close that deal as the lead salesperson...well, that has been my greatest weakness...and honestly one that i've never desired to be good at...but then if i were to go into business for myself, i would either need to improve, or get a partner who is good at that.
2. Secondly, the cost of health care - at least in the U.S. (where i live/work). I'm able to bring lots of other costs down (home mortgage or apartment rent, etc.), but not health care...at least not for my family's needs (*NEEDS*, not wants!). So, if/when i were to go into business full-time for myself, i would need to ensure i can cover such costs...and that makes things quite difficult...especially as per my point #1 above.
...Which is all to state that i'm highly respectful and in awe for folks who *can* make it on their own. Kudos to the post author, and to anyone else who can make it happen!
I'm scared of what's to come, knowing that I want to spend time with my kid while still being a good husband and making slow yet steady progress on my side project, all on top of having a full job. It feels overwhelming and I'm not even in it yet.
I went through this at least 3 times now, and I don't know how to break the cycle. I probably never will.
> was making about half of what my senior software engineer position at $CRYPTO_EXCHANGE was netting me
This seems like something one would certainly share with ones partner. The authors yearning for doing the side project also seems like something that would come up in conversations in a healthy relationship.
Disclaimer: I’ve never been married but have been in serious/committed long term relationships. And I’m not a therapist either.
Congrats and good luck!
I have been working on 2/3 side projects for almost three years now, and my partner realised soon how much happier I am when working on my startups and ideas...but mistrust in myself is still too strong.
Also I only have experience with "manufacture-centered" businesses, maybe the risk with a Saas feels different?
Anyhow, I had been working my ass off, night and day, like you do on gigs like that. My wife of 5 years thought I was cheating on her. HA ! that would have been a lot more fun ugh.
Long story short (you can fill in the blanks, fights etc.).
So one day comes where, the dream comes true, IBM offers to buy us out, but I was in sort of a fog and worried about my marriage and moving to Bocca Raton was probably not going to fly. I get called into my bosses office and he goes through my options, all foggy as hell to me at the time and I sort of grunt and point at taking my profit sharing pay out rather than moving. So OK, in my mind I had just got fired.
I go home and on the dinning room table there is a bunch of papers, divorce papers, my wife comes in and tells me she wants a divorce. OK, so I lose my job and marriage on the same day within hours. So what do I do? Well heck what any sane person would do. I grab my wind surf board and throw it in my Scout (wish I still had it, wife said it was a piece of junk, ha, worth a lot if I had kept it). I grab the dog, she knows the drill, hops in the Scout, I make a quick pit stop for a 6 pack of Pacifico and we are off to my favorite beach.
I take Heidi, my dog, on a couple of baby spins on the board, she loves that. Do a little shredding. Then back on the beach she sits and stares at me, you know dogs know. Sipping on my beer. And it hits me, duh, wait a second, what the heck did my boss say again about profit sharing ? My mind starts to clear, starts racing. I finish that one beer and head back to the house. I check the papers, Fuck ! I am a millionaire, 3 months from now when the deal closes. Oh, let's check those divorce papers, huh, it can be done in 90 days.
So suddenly I am a super helpful husband with the divorce, I will sign everything and run it to the court house of course. Let's just get this silly thing over with, you are totally right.
Anyhow, funny how stuff hits you. Anyhow, never married again. Did one other start up after that. Been done since. Never happier. That was, for me, that moment, I will never forget. I went from the depths of hell to bliss in a moment of clarity.
Did your wife find out she lost out on millions? Was she angry? Did you reconcile?
What are you up to these days?
From the comment about cheating ("that would have been a lot more fun ugh") to the comment about how he became a "super helpful husband with the divorce" once he realized he would be a millionaire, the post gives the impression that the OP was all about himself and never truly cared about the experience and feelings of the woman he was married to.
On the plus side, at least the OP realized that he didn't want to be married and didn't make the same mistake twice.
I am selfish and self absorbed. Maybe a bit of a narcissist, working on it but self aware. And yes, you are completely correct, I realized marriage was not a good thing for me (or for the other person, hehe, that's how bad I am, had to come back and edit to add this as a second thought).
You are who you are.
I'd say the person you responded to read your story through the lens of their own personal history, but then I guess I'm guilty of the same.
Not sure what my personal history has to do with this obvious fact.
It's not hard to imagine an alternate scenario in which a different person would have at least made an effort to talk to his wife and understand why the marriage got to that point instead of making a V-line for the beach when she told him she wanted a divorce.
Again, the impression I got from comments made in the post was that the OP was self-centered and didn't care that much about his wife's feelings, which one might reasonably assume contributed to the breakdown of the marriage. The OP responded and, to his credit, confirmed "I am selfish and self absorbed".
What do you know about him ? Maybe he already knew why the marriage got to that point. What's the point of continuing when the two agrees that the marriage leads to nowhere and that they are both unhappy ? To be fair, as I read it, this sounds like a pretty sane divorce. And sane divorces are far from being the norm.
But if you get home and the papers are on the table as he mentioned, that is past the point of talking with your spouse about your relationship, it is the time to get out, think straight and then head to a lawyer to make sure all is done right.
(coming from someone that has been divorced for 5 years and am in good terms with my ex-wife, we help each other all the time and talk about things/life regularly as friends)
I would argue that's the point where the talking should start (ideally there is also talking before it comes to that, of course).
But that's wasn't the point, the point of the post was that I had a moment of clarity, of what was important to me and where my life was going. I got married because that is what society and family expected, I realized that was not for me.
But ya, if divorce papers are on the table, time to smell the coffee, the fat lady is singing, turn out the lights, time to move on.
Well, if you dont care much about them, they are likely to divorce you. By the sound of it, this dude did not cared about relationship one bit. God knows what faults she had, beyond jealousy, because OP choosen not to trash the ex. Which is noble.
But she was done with relationship for reasons that had nothing to do with money. He was emotionally checkout out for months too. Expecting money windfall to fix that all is asinine. Even if she decided to cancel divorce for half those money, it would be marriage for money and nothing more.
I am semi-retired now, I have many inventions to my name and very very comfortable. Still inventing, no start ups for me, too much work. I have a great situation, I work for an IPR company funded by a wonderful benefactor I met along the way in a semi-retired position. So I still contribute, but in a fashion that fits my life style at this stage.
Thank you for asking.
Wish you amd Heidi the best!
I am afraid Heidi is no more...
I was more broken up over her than my ex wife.
I share your pain, hopefully you will find that kind of friendship again.
E- sorry thought you were OP, but thanks for pointing out what I'd clearly missed by a mile!
Thankfully I did, after seven years, and it saved our marriage.
Help her understand that this really impacts you, and you'd like to work on a solution together. She may be spending so much for a reason you may not be aware of as well. A healthy relationship must be able to have this type of communication. Keep trying. Best of luck, friend.
I'm suffering from work burnout and are planning to quit my current job to pursue a more balanced, self-sustainable way working for myself. Seeing your post help me understand I'm not alone.
12-18 mo after joining most companies in my career, this was my feeling. It's awful. You literally fight to make things better in a company, to help the company earn a bit more profit.
There are the enviable? people who can just work the 9 hours, do the job, not get committed or emotionally invested, and then leave the job when they walk out the door. But for some of us, there's the vision of what could be, and the absurd obstacles preventing us from reaching the what could be. Even so, the what could be often just means a percent or two more profit for the company. If you're saving babies and solving world hunger, it matters. If you're helping telecom companies recover from problems related to the 1980s billing systems which they never bit the bulled and replaced, it ultimately means nothing.
> A weight was lifted off my shoulders.
Until you feel this weight, and you walk away, you cannot know what this feels like. For the author, in such a short sentence, it sounds immediate. For me, 6 weeks after quitting a permanent contract (which is the kind of guaranteed security we're not used to in the US unless you're exective with a golden parachute), I'm finally coming to grips with my freedom. It's like a sponge that has been squeezed into a 1cm cube.
If I could give my younger self advice, it would be to NEVER go work for a company unless you were absolutely passionate about their mission. Never work for the money. You could work for the money and die rich, never having lived authentically. Or you could live authentically, rich or poor, and die satisfied.
It's entirely possible to live authentically without being particularly passionate about the field you earn your living in - I don't have a passion or "dream job" in the software field because I don't dream about labor. I'd much rather be skiing, building stuff in my shop or fishing. This doesn't mean I don't like my job or that I don't find it interesting or that I'm not a good/productive engineer - it simply means I derive meaning in life elsewhere.
[edit, added: why do anything without making effort to do it well? not that this is your attitude, but this sort of attitude is why a lot of software really sucks]
You may enjoy digging the ditch, but ultimately I would enjoy spending the same time on something more useful a lot better.
I will happily dig beach ditches for employers, no doubt, but only with adequate shade and breaks (don't work 80 hour weeks), drinks provided etc.
I consider advising and guiding the engineering organization as a whole part of my job description but there's a point at which just doing the damn thing wins out over protracted debate and sitting in endless meetings. At that point my focus typically shifts to mitigating toil/drudgery/future maintenance for myself and my teammates - I've cursed the names of people I've never met because I've spent months undoing work with their name all over it and my driving motivation in situations like that is to not have my name be the one being cursed by whoever takes my place. I take pride in my work but I don't really tie my sense of self-worth to it at all, which I've seen end poorly for engineers who become emotionally invested in their pet solution or project. When you realize anything you come up with, even if it's the greatest, most beautiful, most elegant solution will likely be replaced/rewritten/become full of hacky bullshit within the span of a few years it makes it easier to accept that.
I think the problem some have with your sentiments is that this scenario is as likely when you have a passion for something, and the control you have is the same as in the jobs you don't have a passion for. So the scenario is more one of:
If the company is giving you pointless tasks, and has erected walls, is it worth the pain in trying to bang your head against those walls - knowing that the majority of the times you will not make a dent to those walls? Being passionate can lead to a lot more pain with virtually nothing to show for that pain.
About half the jobs I had were for things I have some passion for. My experiences:
1. Jobs I had a passion for are all on the bottom half when it comes to my job satisfaction (without exception - no exaggeration).
2. Management in boring jobs are more likely to listen to me. If you're doing something that society puts a lot of value in (e.g. reducing world hunger), it will attract people who want glory, and they are harder to work with.
3. All the boring jobs have left me happier.
4. If I'm passionate about something, I will have my own definitions of success and metrics, and they never seem to align with the company's. What's the point of toiling away on something I'm passionate about if our goals differ? And then in the off chance I convince management to change, I'm as likely to get laid off as in the past. I know from experience how crappy it feels to accomplish something great, then be given the boot while they reap the rewards.
And finally, I'm one of those odd people who doesn't separate job work from personal work. And with the passions that I have, there is no job/company out there that aligns with it. So the logical step is to find a way to minimize time at work and use the spare time to do something more meaningful to me.
> why do anything without making effort to do it well?
Invert it back to you: Why do something well if it has no benefit to you? Especially when you could use that time/energy doing things that are meaningful.
People have different motives for doing things well, and they will do it if there is some payoff (and it need not be financial).
> not that this is your attitude, but this sort of attitude is why a lot of software really sucks
It definitely is, and that's unfortunately the point of stability when you look at the system as a whole. If you want better SW, work on the incentives. Don't expect people to go the extra mile that they will not be rewarded for. Time is finite. I used to work hard to make great SW, until I realized that I could use that time for more meaningful things. If my company rewarded me more than they do those who make crappy SW, I'd be more incentivized.
If you’re working more than 8 you’re only robbing yourself of your life and your time, unless you’re a founder.
> If I could give my younger self advice, it would be to NEVER go work for a company unless you were absolutely passionate about their mission.
This constant theme of being “passionate” about the mission of a company that doesn’t care at all about you is so dystopian. What’s wrong with a job just being a job?
What's wrong with a job just being a job, for most jobs, is that it's 1/3 of your life being spent there. What excuse is there to do stupid, monotonous, or worse - counterproductive stuff for 1/3 of your life? I suppose if you're Hodor that's just fine. It's not fine for people who see potential and opportunities in every scenario.
Ok, if you're a checkout clerk at a grocery store, there's not a lot of room for improvement unless you start to focus on having some good human interactions with your customers. But on HN, I figure that's not most of us.
If you put the HN crowd on a road work crew, you know there would be a lot of workers who would identify significant opportunities for improving the process. Unless you're a monk, why would you do the slow and inefficient thing, excusing it as "it's just a job"? If you see a way to make your 8 hours of labor be worth twice as much to the company profit, or to the customers, or even to your joy and satisfaction, then why wouldn't you try?
If I were the boss, I would probably direct my staff toward a lot of dead ends as well. It's just the nature of not being omniscient. But I would hope that I would be open to the pushback from a worker who says, "Hey, I think we really should be doing Y, and here's why."
The excuse is the alternative is not that common. Amazing jobs are a luxury. We can tune our perspective to one of a job being "just a job", while both capitalizing on the work and leisure time as best we can, or we can think ourselves failures for having them. Seeing potential doesn't easily translate to job security. I think privileged positions render technocrats out-of-touch with the majority.
Absolutely agree, but there's middle ground. You can work at a job that you find fulfilling, and believe to be something positive for the world, without it being a passion. My belief is that people who are passionate about their jobs are driven to do foolish things, like stretching that 9 hour day to 10, 12, 14 hours far too often, because "X needs to get done by the weekend". Passion can also cause people to wrap way too much of their identity up in something, and if they aren't calling the shots at the job (that is, if they aren't the CEO or at least a C-level), it can really hurt their sense of self if (more like when) that job changes in ways that make them unhappy.
Certainly, do something worthwhile, something that you can feel good about. But leave passion for family, friends, and hobbies. Or, if you can swing it, a company you start yourself.
(It's funny, though, because I think the workforce does need passionate employees. Consider that many non-profits are staffed by people who are passionate about the non-profit's mission, yet the majority of those people won't have a say in the direction of their organization. If no one followed their passion when it came to employment, a lot of those jobs just wouldn't get done, since they often don't pay all that well. So I guess in a way I'm grateful to the people who work their passion projects, since they help the world go 'round.)
Because of this I am less attached to the work, there is more wiggle room, and I am less stressed about meeting deadlines.
Expectations from management will also be lower because you are a new-hire without any context. I'm not even going to get into the huge salary bumps you'll receive by hopping instead of waiting and fighting through performance reviews for a raise...
Most good raises come from quitting and changing jobs. The first few months, once you've passed the interview and been accepted, you have ridiculous room to be a loser (not suggesting you are) before the company will begin to recognize that.
Consequently, you may look around and see a lot of actual losers who are underperforming because they're lazy or inadequate.
Freelance, learning to play the consulting game, charging a lot, and negotiating unreasonable things (like pay me in advance for a year of income and you have my attention for a year for any project) is the way to go for people who feel this way. Or you build a SaaS or other business and make it work. Or marry rich.
I liked the article. It was an authentic (I assume) personal story. It wasn't a "strawman," or a "this is the way things should be" thing. It was a fairly plain-spoken personal chronicle.
I enjoyed it, and wish the author well.
For myself, I worked at a company that had a mission I was passionate about. I'm also a xenophile, and it was a Japanese company. I was fascinated by the Japanese commitment to Quality (at that company). I like working in teams; the more varied and exotic, the better.
I joined, planning on an 18-month stay (like my previous two gigs), but left, 27 years later.
I made some effort to find new work, after leaving that company, but became quite disillusioned with the process. I had acquired a "nest egg" that would allow me to retire, early. After a few insulting and rather demoralizing interactions with a few corporations, I decided that it was time to hang up my chinos, and write the code I always wanted to write, the way I wanted to write it; with no one taking a dump on it.
I have never been happier. I am probably working harder than I ever have, in my life, and having a blast.
Good to see you here again, completely off topic follow up: did you or your siblings ever end up writing about work your father did with three letter agencies?
No, I suspect that we have all the information that we will get.
He earned a bronze star, silver star, and a couple of purple hearts, during WWII (I only found one, but he was wounded at least twice -maybe they just award one).
It earned my parents a place in Arlington, with the whole caisson/21-gun salute thing, but we have no idea why he got them.
There was a big fire, in St. Louis, in the 1950s (I think), that destroyed a lot of records.
Forget hearing anything he did with The Company. He was one of the first field agents. I think he may have been recruited in the first year or so of the agency. We think at least one of his brothers may also have been a "company man," but we'll never know. He took that secret to the grave.
Good idea!
My one Japanese company experience was in my early career, and it was discouraging. It has been so long, I can name NEC.
The colleagues were great, but on the occasions that executives from Japan were visiting, we were specifically told to look busy. And looking busy actually meant printing things out, walking around with papers, etc. Even in those dark, pre-eco times, I found it absurd. On the plus side, I got proper introduction to sushi and fell in love with that.
I can only imagine what a good situation one must have to spend 27 years there.
Cheers to your future endeavors.
The corporation (I don't name it in postings, but it's fairly easy to figure out, if you visit my SO Story) is one of the top-shelf corporations in Japan. Their brand is/was pretty much synonymous with "Quality."
I have been into writing Quality code, since my very first engineering project, and loved the passion.
The engineers and scientists in Tokyo were awesome. The company got "first draft pick." Every single one of them had at least a Master's degree. Many Ph.Ds. Having their business card opened a lot of doors for me.
I found their reliance on Process (note the capital "P") to be absolutely infuriating. It worked extremely well on hardware; not so well on software.
I did my best to coax them out of their mousehole, but, in the end, the conservatives won, and the company has basically retreated to its roots; which may not work out so well, in the long run.
It was pretty much impossible to get these (highly accomplished and talented) engineers to accept that their way (hardware and some firmware) would not work on software.
It usually ended up with them, labeling my efforts to introduce flexibility as some variant of “lazy, bad-quality engineering.” Hard sell.
Let's not feature creep work life balance ;)
> I made some effort to find new work, after leaving that company…
I'm curious why you left, if you want to share!
It was no surprise to me. I was saddened, but not surprised.
(I'm ready to "retire" whenever personally, and then work on the code I want with the people I want to without financial expectation!)
Is it for profit or just for fun. I love to read stories like your's.
It’s coming along nicely.
My advice to my younger self would be to chase the money. Make as much as you can, as quickly as you can, so you don't have to work for someone else ever again. I've been passionate about my work before, and, with the exception of one employer, it led me to burnout and under-compensation for my hard work (with the executives of course still taking their fat paychecks). I think there's also a middle ground where you can get compensated fantastically for what you do, and also work on things that you agree with and think are ethically sound, but don't drive you to work past midnight regularly because you love it so much.
Unless you are running the show, your passion is irrelevant. The people who run the show will do whatever they need to do to line their own pockets, and if that means exploiting your labor, or changing the mission to something you're not so passionate about anymore (or, worse, something you're actively against), they'll do it, and they won't be apologetic about it in the least.
Ironically, I think a good way to be compensated while doing something you're passionate about is as a consultant/contractor, where you get to set your rates and schedule. If you're getting paid hourly, all the better, because you know that every hour you put into it is going to earn you more money. As a salaried employee, working harder just dilutes your effective per-hour rate. And as a contractor, it's a lot easier to quit and move on to something else when the company inevitably changes direction in ways you aren't happy with.
Get the money!
Though contracting rates are stuck low unfortunately, I never found anything better than 125/hr.
There's something more here I think. It's perfectly fine to just have a job that pays the bills. But it's not fine if you take that job home with you. It's not fine if the job takes a mental or physical toll on your mind or body. It's not fine to be married to a job. Any job IMHO, even one that you're absolutely passionate about or whatever. Even if you're saving babies and solving world hunger or whatever it's not worth sacrificing your family/friend time.
Personally I make about half as much money at my current job as my last job, but I work half as many hours, and there's no expectation of being a "team player" or "work hard play hard" nonsense, no phone calls at night or on the weekends, I don't have email or teams/slack installed on my phone, I have an office with a door that I can close. (well, I used to, in The Before Times) I make decent money (it's hard to get paid poorly as a software developer) but it's not early retirement money or fancy sports car money the way my last job was. I show up, I do my job, I go home. It's a nice company that does nice things in the world, but I don't really care.
And I know all about the feeling of relief the author mentions.
The idea of searching for the "perfect" job where you're passionate about working for such a wonderful company-- to me that sounds unrealistic. Like watching too many Disney princess movies as a kid and growing up expecting that you'll marry Prince Charming, or being pretty good at football in high school and expecting to play in the NFL, or the musician who keeps trying to get their lucky break. The world... well it's just not like that.
One suggestion for your website: more articles on general advice for how to sell on premise software and what types of business models work best depending on software usage patterns and software delivery. People don't want more features, they want more advice.
It was a first to market competitor to https://localwp.com, who ultimately won out. gg
I don't even know how guys are getting married without prenup these days and asking "wife" permission to do certain things..
A licensing back end is a major part of a software product, and outsourcing that is a major leap of faith. The developers using your product need to trust you, and if they know you're a small operation, they'll look into things like your personal online presence. People do pick up on these things.
Are pictures of guns offensive outside of the US? I realize growing up in the US with a family of hunters has me desensitized, but I can't imagine being upset at someone whose hobby is going to the shooting range.
Yes. The sentiment of many people in Western Europe [1] is that weapon-carrying Americans are at the very least somewhat lunatic.
Big disclaimer: this is not a value judgement, this is not a discussion I want to immerse myself in now ;). Just an observation.
[1] I don't know about other parts of the world.
I haven't seen OP's IG account, but unless it's one of those "confederate flag, don't tread on me, guns don't kill people" starter-pack extremists, it's just another hobby to me.
EDIT: I wanted to add that it's also the type of guns in these pics (surrounding a post of only the word "disobey")- these aren't hunting rifles but guns that are more commonly used on people (AR-15, pistols). That doesn't look like someone about to go deer hunting.
What a weird thing to think. Those guns are most commonly used on gun range targets, not people, even in countries with high rates of gun violence.
I'm living and have lived in countries without widespread gun usage (Germany and Austria) and I've never seen people carrying AR-15 or guns with a similar "military" look around here (I have seen hunting rifles) and have previously lived in a country with widespread gun usage (Israel) and the only people I've seen carrying guns like those there were soldiers or police officers.
You need hunting rifles with large magazines that fire in automatic?
Damn
Damn
Cause there aren't many of those and one will run you well over $20k
Still, I have never seen a PH (professional hunter) need a semi-automatic assault rifle to shoot a buck.
Also i never met somebody who go hunting with an assault rifle. Good few use ARs though cause theyre super common. Theres a dozen cartridges "better" for hunting but that means a new pricey rifle and pricier ammo. .30-30 will run you a buck a round, .223 like 30 cents. And 3030 is not by a long shot the priciest hunting round.
I would just like to point out, and then I'm going to leave this weird conversation alone, that the US second amendment is not, and never was, about hunting. It's about protecting the outcome of the American Revolution, and self-defense. I'm allowed to post my personal beliefs on my personal social media pages, because it makes me happy and helps me meet like minded people. I'm not going to censor myself to please a demographic. I've done that enough in my life.
I'm not sure about offensive, but as a UK citizen I mostly associate guns with crime and violence. I don't know anyone who publicly owns a gun. For the most part police don't have guns here. Typically the only time I see a gun is when I go to the airport (airport security police do have guns).
I'm aware of how cultural norms are different in the US, and as such the owners being into guns certainly wouldn't stop me interacting with a business. But it might well make me question their political/moral judgements.
Until something jams and you need to fiddle with a loaded weapon to get the round/magazine out.
That said, I like living in a country where obtaining one requires me to go through some qualification process and training.
We were following all precautions (and more), and it was great until one of the shells bounced on the wall and fell in my shoe, and I started hopping around in pain with a loaded handgun and my finger still on the trigger. That's when I realized it's too easy for something to go wrong and I didn't need to kill my best friend by accident over some fun.
I've always kept my politics out of my businesses, because I've thought that whatever benefit I might get from a strong political signal (attracting like-minded clients) gets washed out, or worse, by the people I'd alienate. These days, it seems more likely that a political signal alienates potential clients than it does attract any.
All that said, it took me a hot minute to hunt down Ezekiel's instagram dot com web page because it doesn't appear to be linked from his business web site. So it more or less seems like that's personal content he doesn't really associate with his business.
And if you have to go out of your way a bit to find a potential business associate's personal social media, it seems like that's intentional to try to keep the business and personal sides of life sort of separate, to whatever extent that's possible in current year.
And if you go looking into people's personal lives, well, I guess it ought not surprise when you find that people have families and political views and interests and passions. You might not agree with everything you find. But if you had to go looking for it, it all might be on you.
Also it’s not the pictures per se, but the need to make one’s affection for guns public.
Anyway, you asked: that's why I'd be scared to put much into the OP's hands.
Do you feel like your fear is rational? Statistically my gut instinct would be to think you have virtually zero chance of being physically harmed by a business owner with a family, regardless of how many guns they own. Not that I would discount your fear, just wondering if this is something more akin to my fear of heights as opposed to my fear of driving through a high violent crime rate neighborhood at night with my gas tank indicator saying "empty".
Why not set it to private?
Especially in a SaaS (which, like taxes, are something you pay for so someone else can provide a service you care for but are unable/unwilling to provide yourself).
If we were together in person, these differences would be apparent and people would automatically modulate for them. But all we have on this forum are little text blobs which don't come with any of that metadata. I think this is probably the biggest source of conflict and misunderstanding on HN; certainly one of them.
Edit: there's another clear example of this in another part of this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28614998. That was a rare case of people actually figuring out the mismatch.
Story time: I used to have a friend with long hair who worked as a consultant for a company with lots of customers in banking. He was repeatedly told (in indirect ways) that his performance was great, but that his career prospects would be better if he has a more, let's say, approachable appearance. He complained to us (his friends) about it for a few years, how it was unfair, how it shouldn't matter, etc. And of course it's his right to wear his hair however he wanted. Then when he got married, his wife asked him to cut his hair for the wedding. He agreed (didn't feel slighted about it, wasn't bullied into it, just did it for her). Afterwards he liked his new haircut and decided to keep it short for some time more. Lo and behold, some time later, after he'd been at a new client, he got assigned to a more high profile project in a more prominent role. Coincidence? Maybe. My point is - maybe he should have asked himself sooner where his priorities were: to make a career in a conservative sector (which he himself stated as a goal), or his idea of 'sticking it to the man'.
Again, not saying you should do one thing or another. Maybe you're not actually losing customers, or maybe you don't care about losing some, or whatever. You know your business better than I do, obviously. Good luck, I hope your business will be a success.
Pick up on what things? Guns are tools. You may not be interested in those tools, but judging someone because they enjoy them legally and responsibly is unfair and unwarranted.
Furthermore, sometimes people are classified as such and so without them realizing, or at least without them realizing to what extent this happens, or what effects it has. Which I suspect is happening here, and which is why I posted. For a small business that offers a critical service, the personal branding of the principals (and public facing employees) matters. And for most people, that brand should (for better or for worse) be on the bland side, for maximum profitability.
> I'm 100% confident you've lost customers over this.
There's 2 problems here. 1) Extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. 2) Expecting every business persona to be completely beige and devoid of color is absofuckinglutely ridiculous IMHO (and yes, I'm staring at leftwingers here... I'm centrist/anti-tribalist, for the record, but it's been a struggle to say the least). Some of my most admired CEO's are quite colorful (Branson, Legere, etc.) It might even be arguable that the very people who are apt to strike out on their own instead of forcing themselves to conform to ("beige into", I'll dismissingly call it) an organization, are the same people who are least likely to force themselves to conform to social norms. Especially "developers of a certain age"... It may come as a shock, but being interested in computers was not always cool, and in order to doggedly pursue it, one needed to grow a thick skin against those enforcing the "computers are uncool therefore you are uncool" social norms of the time
Many people feel that crypto should be treated like liquid money that can be bought or sold freely, and not like a taxable investment.
Though I'm not sure how principled your objection is. Is it against misplaced political hot takes where you don't need them, or is it against those you find objectionable?
One thing we're working on learning as a community is how to respond to the interesting parts of an article or situation and leave superficial provocations alone. Not easy, but important for curious conversation.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
The article could be better without that part.
Taxes is political and divisive and that does not belong here.
Please check the guidelines before modding.
When an article contains a slight passing reference to a political provocation, that's a great reason not to copy it into the thread and create an off-topic distraction on HN. If it were the main point of the article it might be a different story, but it's obviously a generic tangent in this case.
When there's flamebait, we should just not take the bait. It isn't necessary and there are much more interesting discussions to be had.
You're right to reference the guidelines, which include:
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
You got me here.
"there are much more interesting discussions to be had"
You know that thing people you will not change someones opinion on internet. That has changed.
This insight is golden.
No waste timing on flamebaits when I can have better discussions about other things.
Thanks Dang
Some people resent what they perceive as too much taxes very strongly. Where do you draw the line between taxation and theft?
For example how do you call 50% taxes + 19% social wellfare taxes on top of that, actually a 69% tax bracket? Knowing that in addition to that, should you realize gains (say on stocks) on what you managed to save and put in the stock market, well, these gains are going to be taxed at 34%? What if auntie loved you and made a testament giving you her savings, what about 80% tax on that? Is that what auntie wanted, to give 80% to the state?
69%, 80%: when is it taxes, when is it theft?
I do personally think that in many countries we're way, way, way past diminishing returns due to the ultra high tax brackets and I don't buy the "but infrastructure" argument: it doesn't justify everything.