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> Were you born so rich that you can spend all day hanging out with your friends, without worrying about money? Most of us were not.

That's a false dichotomy. It's easy to have a job in technology that more than pays the bills but doesn't require the same sacrifices as working towards an exit or fame. You can be comfortable without being materialistic.

A goal to retire early doesn't address the "people" side of the "people vs. pleasure" idea. All the luck to you if you never want to work again, but the parent comment's points still stand.

> Even if working makes you happy, having enough money that you don't need to work gives you a huge amount of leverage and freedom that will allow you to turn down work that isn't conducive to your happiness.

Here it just seems like you're trying to scare people who have different values than you into having your values.

>A goal to retire early doesn't address the "people" side of the "people vs. pleasure" idea. All the luck to you if you never want to work again, but the parent comment's points still stand.

My point is that if you are spending 40 hours a week working and 5 or 10 hours a week commuting, you don't have nearly as much time for your friends as you would have with a little more financial independence.

Unless all of your friends are also independently wealthy, you never having to work again isn't going to change the equation all that much. They will still be at work most of the day.

It should also be noted that the odds of startup success (to an extent where you literally never have to work again) is quite unlikely. You can spend time with your friends and family now - perhaps not all of your time, and not completely at your leisure and control, but if the alternative is sacrificing the people you care about for a tiny chance at spending all your time with them... I don't think that's a rational tradeoff.

> Unless all of your friends are also independently wealthy, you never having to work again isn't going to change the equation all that much.

Nice time to play armchair psychoanalyst: some people who wish to retire early may be motivated by a desire to be friends with the (time and money) rich.

It doesn't matter how much free time my friends have, or I. It matters how much free time we have available to see each other.

I have a reasonable amount of free time, but spend it on recovering from work (unfortunately, I need time off for that; so probably I'm an introvert), on time with my partner, on household activities, on learning. The actual time I have for friends is not that much. Admittedly, most of my friends seem to have even less time (mostly because they work longer hours), but others seem to have their life divided only between work and hangout time, so they're available pretty much always.

tl;dr if I had more free time, I'd have just enough time to hangout more with friends, as part of my free time is devoted to other things.

>It should also be noted that the odds of startup success (to an extent where you literally never have to work again) is quite unlikely.

Eh, I mostly agree, if you mean the typical "swing for the fences" kind of startup. But, I think there is awareness of this, for example, the PG essay I linked to a couple messages back mentioned that a 100% chance of a million bucks, to someone without money, is worth a heck of a lot more than a 20% chance at ten million bucks. (obviously, the latter is worth rather more to people who have enough money to amortize out the chances.)

The thing is, you don't need to do a swing for the fences kind of startup if you don't want to. Before this latest investment craze, HN was very big on bootstrapping. I've been running my own bootstrapped company for the last decade or so, and while I am right now attempting to recover from some very bad choices, and thus am doing poorly, for a while, it was pretty nice. I had a very flexible life. I have been able to hire nearly all of my siblings, at one point in time or another; as far as spending time with friends and family goes, my company has been quite successful. I was able to work as much as I wanted, or scale back to very little.

Being your own business, even if that business is, say, contracting, is one way to get a lot more flexibility out of your life. When my income was mostly selling my own labor, I'd sometimes work for other people one year on/one year off. (Timed so I worked 6 months out of each tax year)

Now, I mostly worked on my own stuff on the years off, but the strategy would work just as well if I wanted to work a tax-minimizing half-time schedule. As far as I can tell, it's way easier to get a good-paying part-time job as a contractor than as a full-time W2.

Free time is a pleasure, it's not going to make you more capable of love and working a normal week isn't a barrier to love. But neglecting people while chasing success in the present at a chance for more time with them in the future (with the obvious risk of having nothing to show for it) can threaten your relationships. You may be optimistic about your business, but most people who make that gamble will lose.

How does "materialism" come into it? I dream of being "rich," but for me that means having enough money that I can (a) spend lots of time with family, and (b) spend lots of time learning and doing the things that are important to me, regardless of my employment situation, without any finance-related stress (like worrying about retirement).

So for me it comes down to having the ability to spend lots of time with the people I love (which is always my first priority when forced to compromise), without having to sacrifice the fulfillment I get from my personal/intellectual/whatever pursuits.

I realize that this just means I "want it all," and people might reasonably think that's a harmful attitude to have. But it still seems quite different than "materialism," and I imagine that any negative personal consequences would be different, too.

I find the idea of working a 9-5 every day an unacceptable sacrifice, it's doesn't seem like a false dichotomy to me.

>Even if working makes you happy, having enough money that you don't need to work gives you a huge amount of leverage and freedom that will allow you to turn down work that isn't conducive to your happiness.

Lets think about that for a minute. Unless you're already filthy rich, getting enough money to not work requires a particular skillset. Lets say you're only moderately lucky and are exceedingly good, and that it takes you 5 years to get your fat stacks out of a company you put blood sweat and tears into. Disregarding that you statistically have a relatively small chance of that happening, you come out of the tunnel in 5 years, and what do you do with the rest of your life now? Well, all of your skillset is based around your business. You probably don't have a ton of things that give your fulfillment outside of that business. So what do you do, start at square one? Learn how to play the bongos or just go out and search for the real meaning of life? Or do what you've trained your whole life to do, what has given you the most meaning so far? I say you'll more likely become addicted to that feeling of mastery, and more than likely you'll be on the board of another startup or whatever you like, because you felt a lot more fulfilled when you were disrupting the world than being a person who's bad at playing bongos.

>what do you do with the rest of your life now? Well, all of your skillset is based around your business. You probably don't have a ton of things that give your fulfillment outside of that business.

Spending time with family/starting one? Other hobbies besides bongos? Why are you being so dismissive towards music skills anyway? Developing OSS at your own pace? This is some kind of odd tunnel vision.

>because you felt a lot more fulfilled when you were disrupting the world than being a person who's bad at playing bongos.

Realistically very few of these startups "disrupt" anything. Are there that many people who can only be satisfied slaving away at startups?

This is more of a chicken and egg thing. I did end up spending a good chunk of my life towards acquiring that skillset _because_ I needed the money and the only way to get that was to work thousands of man-hours shifting from one cubicle to another which in-turn made me good at that skill. That skill wasn't the objective, it was/is the means and I make sure I remember that.

What if that skill is only useful/usable in a 9-5 environment in a soul-less corporate environment? Do you recommend I continue to sit in that environment just to use it, since I have been using it for last 15 years and it would be a waste to throw that experience away? Let me be the judge of that, its my life after all.

I bet when we were not working, all of us enjoyed a bunch of things, right? Just because those things got sidelined in pursuit of this skill, which probably was acquired in pursuit of money, doesn't mean that when we finally have that money, we continue to sideline those things. We actually started working so that we had the luxury to enjoy those things, remember?

I truely enjoy working with computers and I probably will continue to do that even when I'm done working. But that'll be at my terms and those days when I feel like spending the morning reading the newspaper and sipping tea instead, I can do exactly that. Thats the point.

Edit: grammer

> Many people here (myself included) claim that they are working really hard so that they can get enough money to be able to do whatever they want for the rest of their lives.

I used to be one of those people until I realized that if I had financial freedom I wouldn't know what I want to do with my life. I was a freelance developer for 7 years and never had to worry about money. I could work on average about 4 hours a day and spend the rest of my time on my own projects or whatever else struck my fancy. It was fun for a time - 7 years to be exact - but I eventually got lonely. I hadn't developed very many meaningful relationships with people I didn't know for 10 years already and I felt isolated. I would rail on the refresh button on various social media websites in search of some kind of human connection.

So I took a full time job and I based the company I chose to work for solely on the people I met there. It's been over 7 months and I've already built friendships with tons of new people and I feel more connected to the world than I have in years. I get to work on fairly interesting stuff without the stress of having to keep my pipeline filled and when I go home I don't take my work with me, which was a big problem I had when freelancing; keeping my work and personal lives separate.

That's why this article resonates with me, anyways. I made more money as a freelancer but past a certain point I didn't know what to spend it on and having the money didn't really make me happy. What makes me happy is building relationships with people and sharing in their struggles and triumphs. I really don't think I'll mind doing this for another couple decades.

The reason you were not feeling connected wasn't that you were freelancing. It was because you presumably didn't do anything else that gave you the opportunity of connecting with people. If you were freelancing and met like minded people in your free time doing things you like, you would have felt as much connected, if not more, as you feel now in your full time job. And would probably have had more free time.

The full time job simply put you in a situation where you got to interact with people without making any effort (except going to office which you would be doing anyway for any full time job).

Freelancing wasn't the reason for your earlier dissatisfaction and a full time job isn't the solution for anybody who is dissatisfied due to lack of human interaction.

> The reason you were not feeling connected wasn't that you were freelancing. It was because you presumably didn't do anything else that gave you the opportunity of connecting with people. If you were freelancing and met like minded people in your free time doing things you like, you would have felt as much connected, if not more, as you feel now in your full time job. And would probably have had more free time.

But that's where you're wrong. I went to meetups regularly, participated in events like Rails Rumble, worked at co-location spaces, etc. I got plenty of human interaction but it simply wasn't the same as what I get now at my full time job. I liken it to home schooled kids. Sure, they can setup play dates and events with other home schooled kids or participate in out-of-school programs with public school kids, but they will never truly get the same level of social interaction public/private school kids get because they aren't going through exactly the same trials in exactly the same way.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the freedom I had when I was a freelancer and I will likely go back to that lifestyle some day but I would be lying if I didn't admit that there was a certain sense of disconnectedness I felt after all those years being on my own. I'm happy as a full time employee now and that's all that matters.

Interesting - I guess the amount of time spent and the degree of common goals, amount of common successes/failures do have a bearing on the strength of sense of belonging to a group. Maybe the experience you were getting in the meetups etc, wasn't scoring high on those points. E.g. you may be only spending 2 hours on the weekly football you play with your friends, but the sheer intensity of the shared experience in such a short time might give you more satisfaction than other activities you may be doing more frequently.

The more I think about it, the more I believe the startup game is the worst way to do this.

If you can keep your expenses to $1,000 per week, and get your billable rate to $200 per hour, then you only need to work 5 hours a week to break even. If you work 80 hours a week for a year at this rate, that's $800,000 - which means you could then spend the next 800 weeks, or 15 years, doing whatever you wanted.

How you get to $200/hr is something of a question, but it has a much more direct path than being a founder, which you could spend 80 hours a week on and still be broke after 3, 5 or even 10 years.

80 billable hours per week. That's double a normal work week. And I assume that you would need extra for administrative stuff that you can't bill for. I doubt this would be either healthy or productive for most people.

I doubt this would be either healthy or productive for most people.

The same could be said of start-up founders, which was the point.

But you can re-do the math at 40 hours a week if you like:

40 hours * 50 weeks * $200/hr = $400,000 / 52 weeks @ $1,000 per week = 7.69 years to do what you want.

And again, we're only talking about a year. Spend a year killing yourself, and then spend the next 5 on the beach or climbing Everest or writing a novel.

The Alberta oil sands are hiring. They pay upwards of $100-$200 an hour and pay for all your housing and meal expenses if your willing to live on camp for 6 months of the year. Works if your single but puts a big strain on your relationships with friends and family.

A lot can happen in a year not to just you but your family and friends that you could miss out on. Look forward to the future but don't rely on it because it might not come.

> If you can keep your expenses to $1,000 per week, and get your billable rate to $200 per hour, then you only need to work 5 hours a week to break even.

True, if you don't pay taxes.

>True, if you don't pay taxes.

Spreading out the income across tax years can make a fairly dramatic difference in the number of hours you need to work.

For a while I was trying to time my working for other people so I had one year on/one year off, and was attempting to time that I had 6 months of income to report in each tax year.

There are also more options to spread out income across tax years when you are consulting through a company that does business other than consulting (but it gets complex fast. You need a competent tax adviser if you go that route.)

Eh, this is something I've thought a lot about; I funded my company doing consulting. ($100/hr is a pretty good rate for me, - I /have/ gotten $200/hr, but that was short-term stuff. Most of the time I'm $75-$100/hr, but that's still a lot of cash.)

Now, there are reasons to stick the cash under your mattress (or in an index fund) - that's not the choice I made, though; I chose to buy some means of production and manage those means of production myself. Not real-estate;servers. I had a few pretty good years; it really has yet to be seen if I'm a fool or not.

I do think it has been interesting; I've gotten to experience being a boss. I've hired family, I've hired friends. I've hired people who weren't friends, who became friends after they left. It has been an experience. It's really yet to be seen if this experience has been profitable or not. Estimating the value of a small company is difficult, and one could reasonably value my company at a level where I have done okay (not never work again okay, but at least buy a nicer condo okay) - you could also reasonably value the company at the 'buy a compact car' level. The only solid offers I've gotten were earn-outs that were heavily dependent on me sticking around for years, so it's unclear how much of that is the company and how much of that is, you know, me.

But yeah; the other option would have been to just contract half-time and spend the rest of that time hanging out in social situations. That would also have been a really interesting experience. Maybe it would have been better than what I did? I don't know.

Now, I'm not chasing investors or anything; That is a very different game. But it is a mistake to equate the hacker news crowd with funded startups. Yes, that's what everyone wants to be now - but that's only because of the amount of money available. Go back three years and it was all about bootstrapping.

On the other hand, you could find a sort of work you enjoy, rather than treating it as something be endured in exchange for money.

>On the other hand, you could find a sort of work you enjoy, rather than treating it as something be endured in exchange for money.

I think that having enough money that you can choose a job based on joy rather than monetary remuneration helps a lot with that. Having money also makes it a lot easier and less scary to leave jobs when the working environment turns bad.

Why not both. If your in tech and enjoy it you can do it.

>Why not both. If your in tech and enjoy it you can do it.

Clearly, that is the goal.

If you are claiming that having a safety net to fall back on doesn't put you in a better position to chose work you enjoy (or rather, avoid work you find unpleasant) - I don't think you are being honest.

>Why not both. If your in tech and enjoy it you can do it.

Let us go in to this further. Yes, most of the technical people I know have pretty good working conditions.

However. Most of the technical people I know work for companies that either make weapons or sell advertising.

The vast majority of the available high-paying technical jobs actively contribute to making the world a worse place.

Now, I am not claiming to have clean hands either; I'm not trying to shame anyone else. I'm just saying that most of us would feel better if, you know, we could move away from killing people and/or making them spend money on garbage they don't need, and on to creating something that actually improves humanity.

The thing is, having a positive impact is difficult on it's own. When you've got rent to pay, the easy job solving interesting problems that ultimately make banzi buddy slightly more effective starts looking pretty good.

The notion that there is an ideal form of moneymaking for each person is a piece of self-help dogma, not an evidenced fact. To the best of my knowledge and experience, there's no viable job or business that would sustainably make me happy. There is, however, a very clear life that makes me happy. I know from experience. I want to become financially independent so I can live that life for good -- or any other life if I so choice.