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Comment by tway9999 | Hacker News Reader

I think this is why some people go into Finance. Spend 10 years in some miserable high stress job, but hopefully gather enough wealth to retire in your early 30s and work on whatever you want.

Also why people work part time and spend their off time painting or playing music. Be poor but have time to work on what you care about.

Edit: Grammar

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I think this is why some people go into Finance. Spend 10 years in some miserable high stress job, but hopefully gather enough wealth to retire in your early 30s and work on whatever you want.

Some of my college classmates went down this route, and while the numbers can theoretically work out (these are uber-smart math/science/engineering folks), I've never seen a single person exit successfully from this game and then unicorn it. The main reason seems to be that they can't fight off the inevitable lifestyle inflation that comes with being in such a social circle. The last I heard from one guy, he was paying almost $10,000 a month to maintain two apartments in Manhattan ...

I definitely understand that. Personally, they are both tough choices. One is essentially a race to the top and the other a race to the bottom. That might be the trouble in looking for rare things(unicorns). You often need to go to extremes to find them, and extremes are usually quite uncomfortable.

Speaking of what I've done myself, I've found a combination of the two seem more likely to succeed. By limiting my resource requirements(cheap rent etc), which I may have focused on too much on the past, and increasing my skills(and pay rate), which I spend more energy on these days, I can spend a continually reducing portion of my time on the things I don't want to do.

Thanks for the interesting article btw.

I always find such logic incomprehensible. Is a job that suits your interest, contributes to others in a meaningful way, and makes your life rewarding while at the same time keeps you a decent living ever so hard to find? I don't really think so. Why do people have to think like "it's I against the world, the job I do is the enemy of my personal enjoyment"? It's weird and potentially harmful.

In fact quite some people who I see getting into finance jobs with the "getting-enough-money" mentality often end up miserably. Without any love for their jobs, then no wonder.

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