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Comment by Apreche | Hacker News Reader

Oh, I want to add one more thing, since everyone seems to like my comment.

You can pay me too much money.

If you give me say, a million dollars a year, I will work for one year, and then you will never see me again. I will go home and live my life as I please, and only code what I want to code. The code may or may not make money. I may or may not try.

If I work at a startup that cashes out big, then I will travel the world, settle in the tropics, and you will not see me again. If someone acquired us as a way of acquiring talent, they will be sorely disappointed.

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maybe you should start your own company?

seems to me you chaff quite a bit about being a "wage slave"

Indeed. Also, he seems to want the pendulum to swing from the employee courting companies to the company courting employees. Personally, I think there should be a mutual respect between an employer and employee. Further, someone whose sole goal is not to work, as it seems here, is probably not someone you really want to work with nor to start his own company.

There are certainly a lot of people who do in fact do nothing when they become independently wealthy. But many also continue working regardless because they actually enjoy what they do.

People should absolutely be paid fairly and treated with respect. But if you expect someone to worship you for some reason, wether employer or employee, you should probably adjust your attitude.

He didn't say he would do nothing when he got rich. He said he would code whatever he wanted, without regard to making money. Big difference. An independently wealthy person could become a star of the open-source world.

That is true. However, his comment still seems downright hostile towards anyone he might work with. It comes across as though he tolerates working with people only by force and has no respect for his coworkers at all.

No doubt his phrasing is overboard, perhaps due to a poor working environment or mistreatment by management. Personally, even I "won the lottery" tomorrow, I would not just abandon the projects I'm working on and the people I'm working with. I enjoy the work and respect the people.

Actually my working environment is pretty great, and my co-workers are cool. That's why it's hard to convince me to leave.

I am incredibly risk averse. I will not take the chance of becoming homeless.

In the current climate, the risk of that is incredibly low. For one thing, if you're risk averse and amenable to trading risk for equity, you can keep a sizable war-chest at home and simply run off VC money. That way even if you crash and burn you have a safety net to fall into.

The current state of the software industry is funny that way. The worst case outcome of being a failed startup founder is a six figure job ;)

I disagree. Why do we have this idea that one needs to be at a company for 20 years? I'd love to see some company pay a million dollars a year to all employees and have a limit of, say, 5 years for working there. It would be interesting to see what effect that would have when every employee knew after 5 years of working there they never had to enter the rat race again if they didn't want to.

If someone acquired us as a way of acquiring talent, they will be sorely disappointed.

Typically in that scenario, there would be an "earn-out" period. Leave within n years, get nothing.

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