How I made a Principled decision to quit my Six Figure job | TK's weblog | Hacker News Reader

How I made a Principled decision to quit my Six Figure job | TK's weblog

tawheedkader.com

58 pointsparth1623 comments

He decides between one selfish goal and another, and its a "Principled Decision"? Maybe he means Rational or Objective.

I've quit six-figure jobs with kids at home and a mortgage. Not because I wanted to 'find myself', but because the founder was evil. I like to think that was a principled decision.

He explains in great detail how he wants to make somthing that matters, fulfills him and has an impact on society and then he came up with toutapp, a product for mass emailing???

I wish this attitude wasn't so pervasive on HN. Who are we to judge if toutapp fulfills him and meets his standard of something meaningful?

I'm totally on board with not judging what gets people their warm-fuzzies, so long as that's what they're claiming it as. Personally I'd just like to see far fewer things like this whose purpose ends up being to share cat pictures. If it's being advertised as game-changing, that claim needs evidence; I'm pretty skeptical and don't mind judging in that case.

I have the feeling HN gets literally spammed with posts like this. Seems to be a nice headline/attention grabber for the HN crowd and most are interesting in some ways but the "Why i quit my super high paying job to start on my own" get old.

I generally agree with you, but I felt this one post was much more interesting than your run of the mill "Why I quit ...". He talks about the decision process and how he tried to make a decision in a systematic way. I think that's interesting since making decisions about your own life is often hard and people mostly don't even attempt a rational approach here, they just follow whatever the strongest impulse they had. Most authors of the "How I quit" posts just announce they quit and then add some more or less coherent after the fact justifications.

I'm not necessarily saying that this author's methodology is great, or that the goal of making life decisions in such rational, principled manner is even attainable, but it's still interesting that he tried and what he writes about it.

Agreed. The post offered at least one way to think about what you want to do in life. I for one don't have a clue about what I would most like to do. I do have a sense that my current job isn't it. But I think it would be foolish to search for a new job or just quit before knowing what the goal is.

We need a duplicate story detector around here :-)

It's an old HN submission, was posted at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1713716 even though there were no comments at the time, so let's see.

RiderOfGiraffes wrote one, but people complained so loudly that he killed it. http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DupDetector

Thanks for the comments guys. I just thought I would clarify one thing. My values list is sorted by most important to least and then certain values, including "being adored by society" is circled in red.

Now, that's an important distinction. The ones circled in red mean they are in conflict with "truth" and therefore is a value I have to work to eliminate from my life.

I believe that everyone has values such as these, where for one reason or another, you've learned to value it even at a subconscious level -- the best you can do is write it down, acknowledge it, and then work to eliminate it.

Sometimes I wonder , what if there is no free will ( Its not like we know Free Will exists for sure yet) - This whole charade of using your drive and determination or the lack there of to do things may be just the way nature always wanted it to be.You are just the puppet playing out your part

Edit: Considering the amount of blogs/books that are written around "Self Help" type of topics which might all be a waste of time if there were nothing like free will - do you guys think about this at all? If so how do you deal with it?

But if there's no free will then it doesn't matter anyway, so best to act as if there is :)

What is the point of thinking about it? I thought about it for a while, realized there was nothing to gain by focusing my mind on this topic, and haven't thought about it since.

You seem worried about this free will stuff. I suggest checking out: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Free_will and, when you're ready, and if you haven't grasped the full solution, http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Free_will_%28solution%29

I think the fact that he put "adored by society" as one of his values is admirable. Most of us do have unconscious values that conflict with what we think is correct, such as seeking validation, or ingrained views on money being good/evil that may not match our conscious reasoning. By writing everything down and acknowledging his values, the author is able to recognize that what drives him isn't necessarily what he wants to follow (see "conflict with truth") and is able to work around it.

Comedy if only for the rampant insecurity oozing out of this guy's every pore

Stopped reading the article after seeing that one of his values is "being adored by society".

Yeah, my thought when I saw that was "what a fucking eunuch".

If I had to choose between being known for who I am (which, I assure you, would lead to controversy rather than admiration) and being adored mindlessly, I'd choose the former. That's just me, and I'm quite happy having neither because it keeps my life peaceful.

This guy's parents fucked up if he really believes he can "have it all". Changing the world and being loved by the world (while living) are mutually exclusive. Jesus got crucified, Lincoln got shot, and so on and so on...

Well.... That and raising a quarter of a million dollars.

the post is from last year. maybe is interessting what happened in the last 11 months :)

He has some other postings from 2010, as well as 2011:

http://www.tawheedkader.com/2010

http://www.tawheedkader.com/2011

I felt ill when I saw "being adored by society" as an explicit goal.

This is why our elders think of our generation as a bunch of self-indulgent wankbaskets. What kind of soft-batch loser wants to be "adored" by society? If that's important to you, give up on "making an impact" now and figure out a way to entertain harmlessly.

If you're worth anything, the best you can hope for, from society at large, is being passively acknowledged as having been right, and that's after a long, hard fight. Do you think Lincoln had a cozy life? Or Gandhi? Or FDR? Oh, you'll be admired by some, and have some close friends, but society at large has three modes. 1. It doesn't give a fuck about you-- that's what 99.9% of us get. 2. It hates you-- expect that for a stage if you want to be substantial. 3. After immense pain on your part on account of (2), it acknowledges that you had a point after all. Usually, (3) is posthumous.

Society doesn't "adore", it limits and retards. And if you're trying to do something real, it will do what it can to throw obstacles in your way. This isn't personal, and it shouldn't be given emotional significance because this sort of rejection will befall anyone who wants to make waves, but people need to be ready for it. People who think they can "change the world" without the world fighting back forcefully (and sometimes getting dirty) are deluding themselves. You really can't have it all; sorry.

This is the inevitable "truth/reality" our author is achieving to discover. These aren't easy lessons learned when working in finance or having early success with your first startup.

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