Patio11 why is it that you make so little money? I mean you could be a senior programmer at some startup in the valley at more than 100k, health insurance and zero issue with immigration.
Things I really enjoy other than money: my kinda quirky work-life balance, a fair deal of freedom in how I arrange my affairs, not being bossable, etc.
Longer-term, I wish all SV senior programmers at startups every success and happiness, but I don't see myself going down that path. I could get 0.5% in a funded startup with a modest chance of success, too... by giving away the other 69.5% of it after raising a seed round.
Joe 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 'Cach-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!
-- Kurt Vonnegut
I weigh free time as FAR more important than money. As long as I'm over some threshold of income, time is by far the most important outcome. Spending all my time working on someone else's projects is simply not an option to me (unless some new maximum of income were to be reached, of course, but that would have to be some kind of in-the-realm-of-fantasy sum).
Maybe I'm being naive, but how exactly do people stomach spending so much time on someone else's goals, away from the ones they truly love and their true passions?
That said, it rarely works out that way for the best developers, who end up making more than they could if salaried. Particularly in the long run and when value of your time is considered. Did you catch that he worked about 15 hours on BCC, made $55k in "a few weeks of consulting" and put AR in a place to explode in 2012 and 2013? He doesn't say how much time he spent on AR, but I doubt the total of all of those was equivalent to the stress of working 60+ hour weeks as a "senior programmer" at some valley startup.
Not to mention that Patrick is WAY past the senior programmer level :)
Seems like it answers itself, eh?
Further, by the time you get a little software empire like the one the author describes ticking along into the six figure range, you can be confident that it'll continue to make you more money each year, proportional to how much effort you put into it. Check back 3 years from now and it'll be $500k/year. Silicon valley dev jobs hardly ever do that.
http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/the-genius-and-tragedy-of-p...
Discussion on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720244
And here's what Patrick replied to him.
"Well, I'm happy that people like me and are invested in my success. I'm also a little discomfited by the psychoanalysis. I'm pretty happy with where I am in life, have a pretty decent career trajectory at the moment, and life is improving in non-career ways which matter more to me anyhow. That's about all I think I need to say."
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1721309
I think what he has written is still valid. Hope you got the answer.