Steve Jobs needed Wozniak at the time and it was fortunate for him, but his personality and ambition were so strong it's very likely he would have been a big deal in any scenario.
And the ability to speak English natively is already in high demand throughout most the world, meaning if you ever get tired of online work and want some people time, you can have a job in like 5 minutes, particularly if you look decent and have a college degree.
Making that jump is obviously scary, but I think many people could find much greater contentedness (not a fan of seeking "happiness", as it's something that I think should be seen as liminal, not a desired constant state) if they only realized that the world is their oyster.
Am I being gaslighted or am I looking in the wrong places? In the EU in my entire 15 year carreer there have been exactly 0 companies or even vacancies offering fully remote.
There's also lots of possibilities outside of software. High end rates for online English lessons are around $40/hour though that's if you go independent, self promotion, etc - which is kind of tedious. But if you can tap into that huge booming middle class in e.g. China, you'll have basically endless students around those rates. Working for a company you can hit around $20/hour, which is quite lucrative in most of the world, and you'll generally have less prep and other meta-issues to deal with.
Similarly you can also sell skills. For instance there's a huge market for chess coaching. And while I haven't tried this myself, I'm fairly certain there's some market out there for teaching/tutoring people in coding. Also if you excelled in mathematics or whatever, there's another possibility. And doing this stuff at a school, or even university, is also completely viable - in most places a bachelors is acceptable for teaching at a university.
This is really what I mean with the world being your oyster. There's so much out there but most people just don't realize these possibilities even exist.
Selling something you need yourself seems twice as hard as selling something you don't need and have extra that others want and have few
OTOH I think Amazon would have sounded like a horrible idea. A book store minus the ability to peruse the books, pick up a coffee, or browse in the same sort of way? I wonder if it really was a great idea, or it's just some weird butterfly effect that drove it up, up, and away.
Food/coffee came later when the in person business was declining.
Hypothetically if someone was burnt out and willing to operate in the gray a bit, how much can you make (approximately) doing English lessons under the table?
Eg: I go to Thailand. I enter as a tourist. Ocassionally, I meet someone in a café and have a conversation with them. They value that enough to pay me.
One of my big pre-covid regrets is I didn't travel more... I had intended to, having been laid off just before it started but everything got locked down and I had a bit of a mental health episode, feeling trapped in interactions I didn't consent to as I spent money on rent I could have spent on hotels etc.
Right as COVID fell, I'd been researching doing the Moscow to Beijing train then exploring SE Asia... it's funny how much of the planned route is possibly bust... for example, I was going to skip mainland China and only visit HK since less visa issues, not sure if that's still possible...
What typed of jobs is this referring to, besides teaching English ?
For in person teaching it's the same thing. Most countries have a system of bilingual schools, international schools, and then university type schools. And all of these offer English language instruction in everything from PE to Calculus. The major difference between a bilingual school and an international school is that the latter will generally pay much more and expect much more with certification a stated requirement, though in practice it often is not.
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Outside of that there's endless odd jobs available that are in need of English speakers. I have friends working in everything from marketing to rehab. A good idea there would be to pick a country you're interested, find the common job boards there (which LLMs may be excellent for, though I have not used them for this myself - yet) and simply search for 'English' or other such keywords. You'll be surprised.
Steve Jobs corralling him into starting a company made him an engineering hero, technology celebrity, and rich beyond his wildest dreams.
He had the privilege of giving away a fortune, to causes he cares about, largely thanks to Steve Jobs.
He's never worried about money and has millions in the bank and multiple houses, thanks to Steve Jobs.
Some people love their celebrity. I've met more than a few, including Wozniak. He seems to genuinely love it, which doesn't mean it doesn't also get tiring at times.
Woz stated he gave away his money because he felt it was corrupting, probably seeing what it did to people like Jobs - although it's more like Jobs was like that to begin with, and the money just made it worse. Woz has also spoken repeatedly about celebrity status. Here's [1] a nice older 'interview' of sorts where he hits on the topic extensively. He didn't want it and has no interest in it.
Interestingly something I didn't know, that's pertinent to our little thread here, is that after Woz left Apple, he became a 5th-9th grade teacher, and did so for a decade!
[1] - https://www.vulture.com/2013/08/steve-wozniak-on-jobs-and-me...
Jobs was a fanatical asshole, and Woz knew he was making a deal with the devil. He was on that train until he nearly lost his own life flying a plane.
Woz didn’t need the fame and prestige that Jobs afforded him, but he definitely didn’t say no or walk away until his plane accident.
You clearly know nothing about the history of these two. Or, maybe even more likely, you want this to be true so you can feel better about your life being relatively unimportant in comparison to Steve Jobs' life. Seems to be very common.
Woz and Jobs were best friends as teenagers and loved each other. And like many good friends they had their issues but loved and respected each other until the end.
Woz wasn't doing a deal with the devil. He was co-founding a startup with his extremely ambitious and abrasive best friend.
Almost everyone that ever worked closely with Steve Jobs came away with enormous respect for him and deeply appreciated their time together. Yes, they also say that he was sometimes an asshole but that's how people are: complicated.
There's a very good chance more than a few people think you're an asshole at times.
Steve Jobs is the reason Apple, Next, and Pixar made their mark on history. No amount of envy and revisionist history can change this.
I just meant to contrast the level of ambition between the two. Wozniak was extremely unambitious and Jobs pushed him into starting a company, with great difficulty.
Nothing is guaranteed in life but I've certainly met more than a few people that I predicted would be successful and then they were. There are character traits that incline people toward success.