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This story template increasingly raises conflicting and mostly negative reactions from me. It wasn't always this way. To the author's credit, $500k in comp as

This story template increasingly raises conflicting and mostly negative reactions from me. It wasn't always this way. To the author's credit, $500k in comp as an engineer is not easy. Kudos to anyone who pulls that off. The reason for my reaction is this: the title can be interpreted two ways: "I had a great setup but I'm giving it up to take a risk." "I want to feel motivated again and I'm willing to give up a lot of money to do so." But I increasingly dislike these posts because (1) we know there's a strong correlation between having a lot of money and success in entrepreneurship. Starting out with a safety net is the best way to derisk! In that sense, this post is just saying "I'm taking a risk after I've derisked it!" And (2) talking about how much money you'd give up to feel motivated is pretty explicitly signalling success to other people in the "I earn enough to be able to talk about it like this" group. That's just upper-middle class signalling. The author's other posts also don't really address the elephant in the room. He was pulling in $500k. If he fails, and even if he wipes out his savings, he's going back to pulling in more than enough money to live very comfortably while still saving enough for kids and retirement. That may feel like more risk than he's comfortable with, but that means he's about as derisked as it gets at a personal level. His explanation in the post titled "How I set myself up financially before I took the plunge." has to do with allocating his savings to make sure he and his family are taken care of, but it doesn't really talk about the point that he at any point can choose to go back to earning more than enough money. That's a privilege that very few people have. He certainly earned that privilege, but how many entrepreneurs can say "I'm setting aside $1m of my liquid money to bootstrap a startup"? If the author had left the money out, it would have been a great post about searching for motivation, which we all struggle with, but I think the money aspect undermines the point.

noego 8y ago
Not everything has to have a point or engage in privilege-self-flagellation. The author has an interesting life story and he is sharing it. You as the reader are welcome to do with it whatever you want to. Some people like myself are curious to hear about how someone built a 500k/year career and why they decided to walk away from it. If you don't find it interesting, just downvote it, ignore it and move on. I think you're reading into it and projecting far more than you need to
- munchbunny 8y ago
  Why do you think I'm projecting far more than I need to? If you don't find it interesting, just downvote it, ignore it and move on. I think you're reading into it and projecting far more than you need to You are always welcome to downvote my comment, ignore it, and move on, but you seem to think it's worth disagreeing with me in more words, so here we are. I think it's reasonable to comment on why I disagree with or dislike a post, especially since I was quite specific about both criticisms and suggestions around what I thought the author was trying to discuss. Not everything has to have a point or engage in privilege-self-flagellation. I'm not asking the author to self-flagellate over privilege. Here's what I suggested verbatim: "If the author had left the money out, it would have been a great post about searching for motivation, which we all struggle with, but I think the money aspect undermines the point." Is that unfair? You don't have to agree with me, but that doesn't sound like a request to self-flagellate.
  - DVassallo 8y ago
    Author here. The pursuit of more money is typically seen as one of the strongest drivers in life. I wanted to highlight that chasing money (and other rewards) stopped mattering for my motivation after a certain point.
  - noego 8y ago
    Maybe I was too flippant. I apologize if it seemed mean spirited. My broader point is that not everything needs to be critiqued, especially when it's just someone sharing their life experiences. Specifically: "I had a great setup but I'm giving it up to take a risk." The author didn't say that he was taking on a tremendous risk. In fact, his follow-up article linked at the bottom explicitly acknowledges his goal of insulating himself from any consequential harm. The above interpretation seems like a projection on your part. "talking about how much money you'd give up to feel motivated is pretty explicitly signalling success to other people in the "I earn enough to be able to talk about it like this" group. That's just upper-middle class signalling. The author is just sharing his thoughts and life experiences. If you think he's lying or faking it to stroke his ego, go ahead and call him out on it. But otherwise, this criticism feels very hollow and vacuous. Everything can be construed as signalling - should people really not talk about their thoughts and experiences because it would be construed as signalling?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
DVassallo 8y ago
Author here. The reason I call out the money is to emphasize that everything was going great with my career. And despite that, I realized that a career as an employee wasn’t the ideal one for me. I’m very risk averse, but not in the traditional sense where I’m paranoid about losing anything. I protect the (few) important things aggressively and then I feel free to speculate with the rest (savings, time, reputation, etc).
- abc_lisper 8y ago
  Why am I seeing this post again? I remember seeing this or something very similar a few months ago. To me this feels like a humble brag than anything. Its great you were able to pull 500k but it isn't very useful to read an article like this. Most of us aren't making 500kpa, and we are not you, thus most of your thought process doesn't apply to us, so why should we care? Now, if you did do something cool technically (or) served users, we are all ears.
  - DVassallo 8y ago
    Someone else posted it here. I noticed it because someone told me about it on Twitter. I realized that climbing the career ladder wasn’t my ideal career, despite everything going very well by most traditional metrics. What I hope readers can take away from the story is that succeeding as an employee is not necessarily the most satisfying career path. It can be, but it wasn’t for me.

noego 8y ago

Not everything has to have a point or engage in privilege-self-flagellation. The author has an interesting life story and he is sharing it. You as the reader are welcome to do with it whatever you want to. Some people like myself are curious to hear about how someone built a 500k/year career and why they decided to walk away from it. If you don't find it interesting, just downvote it, ignore it and move on. I think you're reading into it and projecting far more than you need to

munchbunny 8y ago
Why do you think I'm projecting far more than I need to? If you don't find it interesting, just downvote it, ignore it and move on. I think you're reading into it and projecting far more than you need to You are always welcome to downvote my comment, ignore it, and move on, but you seem to think it's worth disagreeing with me in more words, so here we are. I think it's reasonable to comment on why I disagree with or dislike a post, especially since I was quite specific about both criticisms and suggestions around what I thought the author was trying to discuss. Not everything has to have a point or engage in privilege-self-flagellation. I'm not asking the author to self-flagellate over privilege. Here's what I suggested verbatim: "If the author had left the money out, it would have been a great post about searching for motivation, which we all struggle with, but I think the money aspect undermines the point." Is that unfair? You don't have to agree with me, but that doesn't sound like a request to self-flagellate.
- DVassallo 8y ago
  Author here. The pursuit of more money is typically seen as one of the strongest drivers in life. I wanted to highlight that chasing money (and other rewards) stopped mattering for my motivation after a certain point.
- noego 8y ago
  Maybe I was too flippant. I apologize if it seemed mean spirited. My broader point is that not everything needs to be critiqued, especially when it's just someone sharing their life experiences. Specifically: "I had a great setup but I'm giving it up to take a risk." The author didn't say that he was taking on a tremendous risk. In fact, his follow-up article linked at the bottom explicitly acknowledges his goal of insulating himself from any consequential harm. The above interpretation seems like a projection on your part. "talking about how much money you'd give up to feel motivated is pretty explicitly signalling success to other people in the "I earn enough to be able to talk about it like this" group. That's just upper-middle class signalling. The author is just sharing his thoughts and life experiences. If you think he's lying or faking it to stroke his ego, go ahead and call him out on it. But otherwise, this criticism feels very hollow and vacuous. Everything can be construed as signalling - should people really not talk about their thoughts and experiences because it would be construed as signalling?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

DVassallo 8y ago

Author here. The reason I call out the money is to emphasize that everything was going great with my career. And despite that, I realized that a career as an employee wasn’t the ideal one for me. I’m very risk averse, but not in the traditional sense where I’m paranoid about losing anything. I protect the (few) important things aggressively and then I feel free to speculate with the rest (savings, time, reputation, etc).

abc_lisper 8y ago
Why am I seeing this post again? I remember seeing this or something very similar a few months ago. To me this feels like a humble brag than anything. Its great you were able to pull 500k but it isn't very useful to read an article like this. Most of us aren't making 500kpa, and we are not you, thus most of your thought process doesn't apply to us, so why should we care? Now, if you did do something cool technically (or) served users, we are all ears.
- DVassallo 8y ago
  Someone else posted it here. I noticed it because someone told me about it on Twitter. I realized that climbing the career ladder wasn’t my ideal career, despite everything going very well by most traditional metrics. What I hope readers can take away from the story is that succeeding as an employee is not necessarily the most satisfying career path. It can be, but it wasn’t for me.